


Bed of Nails

by sahiya



Series: Me through Him to You [2]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, But everyone is doing their best, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, No one here is perfect, Not Avengers: Age of Ultron (Movie) Compliant, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Relationship Negotiation, Sickfic, Suicidal Thoughts, did I mention the angst?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-15
Updated: 2018-10-16
Packaged: 2019-08-02 13:22:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 52,620
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16305950
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sahiya/pseuds/sahiya
Summary: Bucky, Steve, and Tony have settled into domestic bliss. Things aren't perfect, but they're happy.Until, that is,  someone decides that Tony is missing crucial information involving his parents, the Winter Soldier, and a fateful night in December 1991.





	1. Part One

**Author's Note:**

> Upon reading a draft of the first part of this, Fuzzyboo exclaimed, "You are so _mean_!" To which I said, "And yet, I'm nicer than canon. At least I fix what I break."
> 
> Angst ahead. Buckle your seatbelts. I do fix what I break, but first I pretty much smash it with a hammer. The suicidal thoughts tag is for Bucky being in a really bad place. It never gets any further than thoughts, but, y'know, proceed with caution if that's a trigger for you. 
> 
> Many thanks to Yamx for the marathon beta read! 
> 
> The title is from U2's "With or Without You."

_See the stone set in your eyes_  
_See the thorn twist in your side_  
_I'll wait for you_  
_Sleight of hand and twist of fate_  
_On a bed of nails she makes me wait_  
_And I wait, without you_

***

Bucky was already gone when Tony woke up.

He wasn’t sure what had woken him. It wasn’t Bucky getting out of bed; Bucky never woke either of them getting out of bed. It wasn’t a noise, either, since the bedroom was soundproofed and Tony was used to Steve’s faint snoring, which the serum had not cured. 

Steve had been in the middle tonight, so Tony couldn’t tell by touch if Bucky had left recently or been gone awhile. He guessed it didn’t really matter. He got up, wrapped himself in a bathrobe, and went looking for their wayward partner. 

He didn’t have to go far. Bucky was sitting on the sofa in the living room. He was looking out at the skyline that was barely beginning to lighten. It would a hazy, humid mid-summer’s day, the type that made Tony stay inside with the AC blasting. Bucky hadn’t turned any lights on, and the light pollution pouring in made him look gray and washed-out, as though he hadn’t slept at all. 

“Hey,” Tony said softly, not wanting to startle him. 

Bucky didn’t react. Tony padded over and reached out, waiting for Bucky’s nod before touching him. Bucky turned his head, pressing his face into Tony’s hip. “Nightmare?” Tony murmured. 

Bucky nodded. 

“Memory?”

Another nod.

“New one?”

Head shake.

“Want some water? Tea?”

Another head shake.

Tony stroked his fingers through Bucky’s hair. “Want me to hold you?”

There was a long hesitation this time. Tony waited for Bucky to work through the feeling that he didn’t deserve to be comforted, that this suffering was his just punishment for the pain he’d caused, even if it hadn’t been his choice. In daylight, he was pretty good at talking himself out of those thoughts, but at night, on the heels of a nightmare, they came calling. It was almost worse now than it had been six months ago, because the memories he was recovering now were mostly from his time as the Winter Soldier. The past couple of weeks had been especially brutal, but Bucky seemed to be coping as well as anyone could expect. Still, on nights like this one, he had a hard time accepting comfort when it was offered.

Nearly a minute after Tony had asked, Bucky gave a slow, jerky nod. 

Tony prodded him into sitting forward. He slid behind him on the sofa and pulled Bucky’s back against his chest. Bucky let his head fall back to rest against Tony’s clavicle. Tony pressed a kiss to the side of Bucky’s head. He closed his eyes and stayed quiet, almost dozing, the heavy weight of Bucky pressing him down into the couch. Bucky wasn’t shaking; he wasn’t tense. He was just silent. Tony stroked his thumb back and forth over the tender skin on the inside of Bucky’s flesh arm and let himself doze.

Tony roused a little when Steve came out, up at his usual ungodly hour for his morning run. Bucky had fallen asleep by then, but he woke, too, when Steve leaned over to kiss first Tony, then Bucky. “Bad night?” Steve asked sympathetically. 

“Not great,” Bucky said, his voice rough. 

“Why don’t you two go back to bed for a couple of hours?” Steve suggested. “I’ll bring back coffee and breakfast.”

“Sounds great,” Tony said, wincing a little. A position that had been comfortable two hours ago was not as comfortable anymore. Steve pulled Bucky off the couch and Tony was finally able to stretch his legs. Pins and needles erupted in his right thigh, and he couldn’t help groaning. 

“Shit. I’m sorry,” Bucky said.

“S’okay,” Tony said, but let Bucky help him up. He stumbled a little when his leg didn’t want to support him. Bucky caught him. “Maybe a different position next time.”

Bucky frowned. “You should’ve just stayed in––”

“Don’t start, Buck. I’m fine. And I’ll be even more fine once I’m stretched out horizontally in our bed. C’mon.” Tony reached out and caught hold of Bucky’s hand. “Come lie down with me while Steve runs circles around the city.”

Bucky still looked guilty, but he nodded. He let Steve kiss him one last time, and then he allowed Tony to tug him into the bedroom. Tony lay down with a happy sigh and then rolled over onto his stomach. He felt the mattress dip as Bucky climbed in beside him. Bucky pulled the blankets up and over both of them, and the world went soft and quiet. Tony closed his eyes, holding himself still as Bucky tucked himself in beside him, metal arm draped protectively across Tony’s back. 

“Thanks,” Bucky muttered after a few minutes. 

Tony squirmed closer. “I just wish you’d woken me up. You know I don’t need much sleep.”

Bucky snorted. “I know you need more than you get. Besides.” He heaved a sigh. “I can tell myself anything I want right now. Won’t matter next time it happens.”

“Yeah,” Tony said drowsily. “I get that.” Reason didn’t matter in the moment. It might be years before Bucky was able to bring himself to ask for comfort after a nightmare about his time as the Soldier. Tony was just glad he was willing to accept it when it was offered by either of his partners, most of the time. 

Bucky pulled Tony closer, nuzzling the back of his neck. “Sleep, doll.”

“You too,” Tony murmured, halfway there already. 

He woke again, slowly, deliciously, to the sensation of Bucky kissing the back of his neck. “Mmm,” Tony mumbled, arching against Bucky. “Steve back?”

“No, just me,” Bucky said. His metal hand drifted down Tony’s abdomen and rubbed lightly over Tony’s boxer-briefs. “Thought I might wish you a good morning.”

Tony’s dick gave an interested twitch. “Twist my arm. What do you––oh, okay,” he said, as Bucky flipped him onto his back. 

He nuzzled into Tony’s neck. “Keep your hands on the headboard,” he murmured, and Tony shivered, raising his arms to grip the headboard. Bucky slithered down Tony’s body, taking the covers with him, and settled in the V of Tony’s legs. He kissed the inside of Tony’s hip and lingered there; Tony’s dick twitched again, and Tony groaned. Bucky in this sort of mood was likely to draw a blow-job out into an exquisite form of torture. 

And that was exactly what he did. He started off slow, barely touching Tony at all, until Tony was strung tight like a bow with anticipation, his thigh muscles trembling. “For fuck’s sake, Bucky,” he said, and Bucky laughed, the sound muffled against the inside of Tony’s thigh. Then he licked a stripe up the underside of Tony’s dick, and Tony tightened his grip on the headboard until it hurt. 

Bucky pulled off and looked up at Tony through his lashes. “Relax,” he said, sounding smug. “Don’t want you to break your own fingers. Also, you’re not coming until Steve gets back.”

“Um, what?” Tony said, but Bucky just smirked and swallowed him down all at once. Tony almost arched off the bed. Bucky steadied his hips casually with his metal hand––and Jesus, that was hot. Tony was never not gonna love being held down by the arm that he’d designed for Bucky. 

Bucky settled in, getting comfortable, like he was going to spend all morning sucking Tony off. He set a rhythm that was neither fast nor slow, with little flicks of his tongue at the head to drive Tony crazy without actually pushing him over the edge. 

Jesus fucking Christ, how long could Steve possibly _take_? How many times did he have to run around the goddamn city anyway? 

Within minutes, Tony was a puddle of desperate need, reduced to begging Bucky to just fucking let him come already. Bucky was unmoved, even though he’d added a hand behind Tony’s balls to his repertoire in the last couple of minutes. Anyone else would’ve had a sore jaw, but Bucky didn’t seem to be slowing down at all. 

“Hey, rise and shine,” Steve said as he came in. “Oh,” he said, clearly taking in the scene on the bed. “Oh wow.”

“ _Thank God_ ,” Tony sobbed, and tried to thrust into Bucky’s mouth. Bucky held him down, but his pressure and suction suddenly increased all at once, and the next time he swirled his tongue around the head, it was a lot more deliberate. Tony had been hovering on the edge for what felt like hours but was probably only about twenty minutes. 

His orgasm punched through him, whiting out his vision and leaving him gasping for breath. Bucky was relentless, continuing to work him over until Tony had to push at him weakly to get him to stop, so over-sensitive that it hurt. Bucky pulled off and smiled up at him, way too pleased with himself. 

“Well,” Steve said, still leaning in the doorway, “that was nice to come home to.”

“You want one?” Bucky asked him. 

Steve chuckled. “I’m good, Buck. I need a shower and breakfast.” He leaned over and kissed Bucky on the head. He set two cups of coffee and a bag of pastries on the bedside table and disappeared into the bathroom. 

Tony was still trying to get all his neurons to fire in the same direction. Bucky crawled up next to him and claimed one of the coffees. Tony rolled over, nuzzling into Bucky’s lap. His brain was fuzzy with feel-good hormones telling him that life was amazing. “You want me to?” he asked. 

Bucky gave him a lopsided smile. “I’ll take a raincheck. I don’t think I’m completely recovered from last night.”

Tony frowned. Now that he was paying attention, he could tell that Bucky was only about half-hard; not nothing, but not nearly as hard as he should have been for just having spent over thirty minutes sucking Tony off. Bucky _loved_ giving head; most of the time he got himself off while he was doing it. “You sure?” he asked. “I bet I can do something about it.”

“Probably,” Bucky said, “but I’d rather be in the right headspace to enjoy it.”

“Fair enough. Tonight, then.” He sat up, since there was no good way to drink coffee lying down. 

“It’s a date,” Bucky said, and handed Tony the second coffee. 

By the time Steve emerged from the shower, Tony and Bucky had migrated out to the kitchen island. The three of them picked at the pastries Steve had brought back while Bucky and Steve bickered about their plans for the sparring session they had scheduled with Sam and Natasha later that morning, and Tony poked idly at his plans for the next iteration of the suit. Sadly, that wasn’t on his docket that morning. He had an SI board meeting coming up in a week and a half, and he had to perfect the prototype for the new StarkPhone, along with plans for its release. 

“Free for lunch?” Steve asked as they loaded the breakfast dishes into the dishwasher. 

Tony sighed. “Wish I was. Too much to do.”

“Can we lure you out for dinner?” Bucky asked, as he made up a sealed travel mug of coffee for Tony to take to the workshop. 

“I don’t know,” Tony said with a smirk, “do you promise to eat shirtless?”

“Only if we’re not cooking,” Steve said with a smile. 

“Deal,” Tony said. “Takeout from Momofuku and shirtless boyfriends, I am one hundred percent here for that.”

He might have preferred to spend his morning playing with Bucky and Steve in the training gym, but he was in a good mood nonetheless as he headed downstairs to his workshop. “Morning, J,” he said as he entered. 

“Good morning, sir. Shall I pull up your inbox?”

“Nah, I’m feeling magical, don’t want to waste that on email. Anything urgent from Pepper?”

“A few notes from her call with your European investors, but nothing urgent.”

“Triage my inbox, then, and I’ll get to it after lunch. I’m going to do some goddamn science.” 

Even if it wasn’t his suit, playing around with the new StarkPhone was fun. They’d been struggling for their share of the market the last couple of years, but iPhones had gotten boring. Apple seemed to think they could get away with improving their camera and battery life. And for a while, Tony had been distracted––by Steve, by Bucky, by Iron Man and the Avengers. But no more. 

He’d been toying for years with a version of his holographic technology that could be mass-produced and sold, and he’d finally hit on something that he thought would work. As a bonus, they were planning to release the first gen of StarkVR at the same time as the new phone, and it was all designed to work together seamlessly. No one had managed to produce affordable VR tech yet. Tony was gonna drink coffee from a mug labeled “Tim Cook’s Tears.”

At one, Tony stripped off his safety goggles and fixed himself a smoothie for lunch. He played a quick game of “flammable or not flammable?” with DUM-E––75% failure rate, not that he could help his faulty programming––and finally let JARVIS open up his inbox for him. 

“Boring, boring, boring,” he muttered, skimming through the messages and flicking away everything that annoyed him. Thaddeus Ross was still trying to get him to meet with him about God knew what, and Tony did not have time. He would, in fact, _never_ have time. He paused, frowning at a highlighted message. The email address was a random string of letters and numbers, and the subject line was simply, “FYI.” There was a video attachment. 

“Any reason you didn’t send this to spam, J?” he asked. 

“The sender went to considerable trouble to mask their IP address from me, sir. I thought you might want to take a look. The file is clean, of course.”

Tony frowned, torn between annoyance and intrigue. JARVIS was usually pretty good at ferreting out things that warranted his attention. He supposed it was too much to hope that it was porn. He pulled it up and hit play.

It was not porn.

There was a stretch of road. A familiar car. An accident.

A murder. 

Tony was frozen in shock. There was a roaring in his ears, his smoothie had turned to lead in his stomach. He’d broken out in a cold sweat all over.

Then the murderer looked at the camera.

“No,” Tony said aloud, as the video stopped on Bucky’s face. “No.”

“Sir.“

He was going to be sick. He didn’t even have the chance to get to the bathroom off the lab, he just lunged for the nearest garbage can and threw up his entire smoothie in one burning wave. His eyes watered as he dry-heaved and then threw up again.

“Sir, I am notifying Captain Rogers and—“

“No!” Tony managed. “Override. Level 5. Lockdown.”

“Are you quite certain, sir? You are in physical and emotional distress.”

Tony gave a watery laugh and slid down to sit on the ground. He rested his elbows on his knees and cradled his head in them. “No shit.”

His parents had been murdered. It hadn’t been an accident. His dad hadn’t run them off the road because he’d been drinking. His parents had been murdered.

And Bucky had done it. 

The images rose up again in his mind, and he thought he was going to be sick again. He remembered the discoloration on his mother’s neck when he’d gone to identify the bodies. They’d cleaned up the blood, arranged her hair to cover the worst, but they hadn’t covered up the line of bruises around her neck. From the seatbelt, they’d said. He wondered if the coroner had just been mistaken or if even that had been a Hydra cover-up.

He was suddenly dizzy and faint, like he hadn’t felt since the earliest days of the arc reactor. Like his heart was failing him. He had to lie down. 

It was shock, he thought distantly. If Steve had been there, he’d have put a blanket over Tony, held him close, told him he was safe. But Steve wasn’t there. Steve—Steve couldn’t know. _Bucky_ couldn’t know. Did they? Oh God, did they know? Had Bucky ever dreamed about that road, that car––Tony’s mother? Had Tony ever comforted him after that dream? 

It wasn’t him, he told himself. He knew that. He did. But it––it’d worn his face. It’d worn his face, and it’d looked right into the camera, and Tony couldn’t stop _seeing it._.

Tony’s stomach tried to turn itself inside out. He rolled onto his side so he wouldn’t choke and pulled his knees up to his chest. 

He couldn’t stop seeing it. He didn’t think he’d ever stop.

***

The workshop was blacked out. 

Steve paused in front of the darkened glass, frowning. Bucky was waiting upstairs with the takeout Tony had asked for that morning. Tony had his Do Not Disturb protocols activated, but Steve could usually get around those by showing up in person. But this was new.

“JARVIS, what’s going on?”

“Mr. Stark has locked the workshop down.”

“I see that. Can I speak to him? He had plans with me and Bucky tonight.”

There was a beat of silence, as though JARVIS was hesitating—or asking Tony. Finally he said, “I’m afraid not, Captain.”

Steve crossed his arms over his chest. “JARVIS, is he all right?”

Another beat of silence. “His vital signs are all within acceptable parameters.”

That was a _no_ then. Steve swore. “JARVIS, let me in.”

“I cannot, Captain. I wish I could.”

He sounded like he meant it. Steve didn’t have a good feeling at all. Tony had pulled this sort of crap a lot, back in the day, but he’d been so much better about letting them in since they’d all gotten together. 

What had happened? Steve wondered. What _could_ have happened, to so upset Tony? Or maybe... was he angry? He hadn’t been angry that morning. He’d been cheerful, despite the interrupted night. It felt impossible that something could have happened during the day to upset him that much.

Steve’s comlink beeped at him. “Did you get lost?” Bucky asked. 

“No, it’s... the workshop is blacked out and locked down, and JARVIS won’t let me in.”

“What? Why?”

“I don’t know,” Steve said, frustrated. “I don’t have a good feeling about this, Buck. Something’s wrong.”

“I’m on my way,” Bucky said. 

Steve crossed his arms, frowned at the glass, and waited for Bucky. He thought maybe he could detect movement behind the darkened glass, but he wasn’t sure. JARVIS had said Tony was in one piece and healthy enough, so Steve supposed he didn’t have to worry that he was lying in a pool of his own blood or running a fever or anything like that. Still, nothing about this was good. 

Bucky was barefoot when he stepped out of the elevator, apparently not having stopped even to put shoes on. He frowned at the blacked out windows. “Damn.”

“JARVIS says he’s okay physically, but he won’t let me in and Tony won’t talk to me. Do you have any idea what might’ve set him off this badly?”

“No idea.” 

“Really?”

“You and I haven’t been apart for longer than it takes to take a leak all day, Steve, how would I know what’s wrong if you don’t? Something must’ve happened. Did he leave the workshop today, JARVIS?”

“No. Mr. Stark been in his workshop since approximately 8:15 this morning.”

“So whatever happened, happened here.” Steve bit his lip. “Don’t suppose there’s anything else you could tell us, JARVIS? Like what set him off?”

“I’m afraid not, Captain.”

“Didn’t think so,” Steve sighed. He glanced at Bucky. “JARVIS, can you pass along a message to Tony for us?”

“Yes, I can do that much,” he said, sounding almost relieved at being able to do _something_.

“Tell him that we’re out here, and that we’re not moving,” Steve said, leaning against the wall. “At least one of us will be here until he lets us in. Whatever is wrong, we want to help him fix it. And if we’re what’s wrong, we want to work it out. We’re not leaving.”

“I will tell him, Captain,” he said. 

“Thanks.” 

Bucky nodded. “Good call. I’ll run upstairs, get food and some other stuff for us. Might as well be comfortable while we do this.” 

Steve had been planning to just sit down on the floor and stare at the workshop doors to try and will them open, but he supposed that was a better plan. 

Bucky returned not only with the bags of takeout but also a couple of couch cushions for them to sit on, since even super soldiers’ asses fell asleep eventually. “JARVIS, tell Tony we’ve got food out here if he wants to join us,” Steve said. 

“I will do so, Captain.”

There was no response. They ate their fill and then Bucky took the leftovers upstairs so they wouldn’t spoil. He came back down with a couple more pillows, their comforter, both their tablets, and pajama pants for Steve. Steve changed, and the two of them settled on their couch cushions, their backs against the wall. 

“How long do you think he’s going to stay in there?” Bucky asked after a few minutes of silence. 

Steve grimaced. “Could be a while. He has a bathroom and probably some food. What I can’t figure out is––”

“ _Why_.”

“Exactly. Something happened. JARVIS won’t tell us what. So I guess we just have to wait until he’s ready to tell us what it is.”

“Or lie about it,” Bucky muttered. 

Steve shook his head, determined. “He’s missed that boat. If I spend the night out here staring at the workshop doors, I’m having it out of him.”

“Unstoppable force, meet immovable object,” Bucky intoned. “That’ll go well. I should sell tickets.”

Steve glanced at him. “You’d handle it differently?”

Bucky shrugged. “Whatever it is, it’s big enough that it’s got him hiding in a hole. I don’t think pushing is gonna help. He’ll want to tell us, it’ll just take him a bit to work his way around to it. In the meantime, I think we gotta be patient. You gotta be as patient with him as you were with me when you brought me in.”

Steve sighed, tilting his head back to rest against the wall. “Wish he’d talk to us now.”

“Only thing we can do is wait. You did the right thing earlier,” Bucky added, leaning over to rest his head on Steve’s shoulder, “telling him that we weren’t going anywhere. That’s what he needs to hear. Because he doesn’t ever really believe it.”

“I know,” Steve said, and put his arm around Bucky’s shoulders, pulling him closer. 

Eventually, Bucky dozed off, his head pillowed on one of the couch cushions. Steve read a little, dozed a little. They were warm and dry and the couch cushions weren’t terrible, but it still wasn’t exactly comfortable. He didn’t sleep, not properly, but he did rest his eyes. No use keeping them open when all he was doing was staring at the darkened windows of the workshop, anyway. 

He was halfway between awake and asleep when JARVIS said, very quietly through the comlink Steve always had in his ear, “Captain Rogers, Mr. Stark has unlocked the workshop. He says you can come in––alone.”

Steve blinked, confused. “Not...”

“No, Captain. Only you.”

Steve was lucky Bucky hadn’t fallen asleep with his head in Steve’s lap, or it would’ve been impossible to shift him without waking him up. Steve climbed carefully to his feet and the still-darkened doors to the workshop whispered open. He glanced at Bucky, but he must have been tired after his mostly sleepless night, because he didn’t move. 

The workshop itself was dim but not dark. “Tony?” Steve said, as soon as the doors closed behind him. 

“Here,” came a quiet response.

Steve rounded one of the tables and found Tony slumped on the floor, back against the wall. DUM-E was hovering solicitously, and he made a series of sad beeping noises as Steve got closer. Tony tracked Steve listlessly, none of his usual energy in evidence. He was pale, and his eyes were red-rimmed, as though he’d been crying.

“Tony, hey,” Steve said, kneeling down beside him. He placed a careful hand on Tony’s shoulder. “We’ve been so worried about you.” _Are you okay?_ seemed like a really stupid question under the circumstances. “What happened?”

Tony swallowed. “I, uh. Someone sent me a video. I don’t... I don’t know... Did you know?” he demanded suddenly, sitting up and grabbing Steve’s hand. “Did you know about my parents?”

“About your parents?” Steve repeated, frowning. 

“About––about how they died?” Tony’s voice cracked, audibly, on the last word. 

Steve’s frown deepened. “It was a car crash, wasn’t it? You told me you thought––you said Howard had been drinking.”

Tony shook his head. “That’s what I always thought. But someone––someone sent me a... a video.” He swallowed. “You should watch it. It’s pulled up on that screen there.” He gestured toward one of the monitors.

Steve did not want to stop touching Tony, now that he’d started, but Tony clearly wanted him to watch it, and he couldn’t see the monitor from the floor. He squeezed Tony’s shoulder and got up. 

The black and white video was paused on a dark stretch of road. Steve noted the timestamp in the corner with a sinking feeling. 

“Tony,” he said softly. 

“Just watch it,” Tony said, exhaustion in his voice. Steve glanced at him and saw that he’d pulled his knees up to his chest, making himself as small as possible. _Self-soothing_ , Steve thought, and wondered if this is what seventeen year old Tony had done, after someone––Obadiah Stane, probably––had called to tell him. Steve had a momentary flash of a painfully young Tony, curled up on the floor of his MIT dorm room just like this. 

Steve swallowed and pressed play. 

By the end of it, Steve thought he might throw up. The video was grainy, but it was clear enough. That was Bucky’s face. That was the Winter Soldier. The Winter Soldier had murdered Howard and Maria Stark. Hydra had used Bucky to murder––

“Oh God,” Steve breathed. 

“It’s okay if you have to throw up,” Tony said. “I did.”

“Oh God,” Steve said again. “Tony, I––Jesus.”

Tony looked up at him, eyes rimmed with red. “You really didn’t know?”

“No,” Steve said instantly. He knelt down next to Tony again, reaching out to lay a hand on his arm. “No, God, no, Tony, I didn’t know. This wasn’t in any of the information we uncovered about the Winter Soldier, or any of the stuff Nat dumped online after the Triskelion. I would’ve told you.”

Tony looked him in the eye, gaze shifting minutely, as though he was trying to determine whether Steve was telling him the truth or not. “Okay,” he finally said. “I believe you.” He swallowed; it looked painful. “Do you think Bucky knows?”

Steve shook his head. “I don’t think so. He hasn’t told me if he has, and I think––I don’t think he’d keep something like this from me. And even if he did have a dream or something, he––he might not recognize Howard, and he definitely wouldn’t have known your, um...”

“My mom,” Tony said, face crumpling. 

“Oh Tony, sweetheart,” Steve said, and sat down so he could pull Tony into his arms properly. “I’m so sorry.”

“I don’t know why it feels like this,” Tony said, letting Steve tuck his head under his chin. “It’s been _years_. Decades. I was so angry at my dad for so long. I knew he’d been drinking, I thought it must’ve been his fault. And now... it’s all a lie, everything I thought I knew.”

“I know,” Steve said, rubbing a hand up and down Tony’s back. “I know. I’m so sorry.”

“And his––his _face_ ––I can’t––Steve, I can’t see him right now,” Tony said, pushing away just enough to look Steve in the eyes. “Steve, I can’t, I can’t see him. I don’t know what I’ll do if I see him. I can’t.”

“Okay, it’s okay,” Steve said, cupping the back of Tony’s head. “It’s okay. Look, I need to go talk to Bucky. I’ll send him up to my old apartment, and then I’ll come back and get you and we’ll go up to the penthouse together, all right?”

Tony nodded. He drew a deep, shuddering breath, and let go of Steve. Steve kissed him on the forehead and stood up, steadying himself against a chair. 

The video was still paused on the still of Bucky’s face, looking up into the camera. “JARVIS,” he said quietly, “get rid of that. Don’t delete it, just make it disappear. I don’t want Tony to see it. And then, can you wake up Bruce and Sam for me? Tell Bruce to come down here. Ask him to bring some of his anti-Hulk tea with him. Send Sam to my old apartment.”

“Of course, Captain.”

The workshop doors slid open, and this time, they woke Bucky. He was awake in less than a second, sitting up and frowning as Steve came in. “Steve? What’s going on? Did Tony let you in? You should’ve woken me up.” Bucky pushed himself to his feet. 

Steve stood firmly in front of him. “JARVIS asked me not to.” 

Bucky blinked. “Why not?”

Steve took a deep breath, wondering if there was any good way to handle this. The only ways that occurred to him were _bad_ and _worse_. Send Bucky upstairs with no information––just the knowledge that Tony refused to see him––and his mind was likely to fill in the blanks in the worst possible way. But the truth, in this case, was no better than the worst case scenarios Bucky’s mind would conjure up. 

It did, however, have the slight advantage of being the truth. 

Steve reached out and put his hands on Bucky’s shoulders, then pulled him in so they were forehead to forehead. 

“Stevie,” Bucky said, voice trembling minutely. “What’s going on?”

Steve closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He counted to three and let it out. “I’m going to tell you something. And when I do, I want you to remember that I love you, that I’ve always loved you, and I will always love you. And Tony loves you, too, all right? Can you remember that?”

“I can try,” Bucky said, sounding deeply shaken. “Steve, please, just...”

“The Winter Soldier killed Howard and Maria Stark.” 

Bucky went absolutely still. 

“Someone sent Tony video of the murder.”

Bucky didn’t make a sound. 

“Tony is... shaken up,” Steve said. “He needs some time. So I’m going to take you up to my old apartment. Sam should be waiting for us. And I want you to sit with him, while I look after Tony. Is that okay?”

There was a brief pause, then Bucky nodded. Steve pulled back enough to look at him. Bucky was looking away. “Buck?”

Bucky looked back at him, eyes gone... not totally vacant like Steve had worried they might be, but not all there, either. Shock, Steve thought, but also... resignation, maybe? Was there such a thing as shocked resignation? Resigned shock? As if a blow you’d been bracing for had finally landed but was still so much worse than you’d expected. 

Steve hadn’t realized until that moment just how much Bucky had been anticipating something like this. Not this, specifically, but something like it––a monster that would rise up out of his past and destroy his present. He wondered how many of Bucky’s nightmares were a variation on that theme. 

The elevator dinged and the doors opened, revealing a disheveled Bruce in his pajamas. He was carrying a canister of the tea Steve had asked him to bring. “Hey,” Bruce said, taking them in. “JARVIS said you needed me?”

“Yeah,” Steve said, not moving away from Bucky. “Can you go sit with Tony in his workshop? Just while I take Bucky upstairs and get him settled with Sam.”

“Sure,” Bruce said, eyes flicking worriedly back and forth between Steve and Bucky. “What’s going on?”

Steve shook his head. “Tony might tell you what’s going on. Otherwise, I’ll explain everything as soon as I can. I just need to––”

“Yeah, of course,” Bruce said, stepping out of the way so they could get into the elevator. 

Bucky still hadn’t said a word. 

JARVIS took them up to the apartment Steve had lived in when he’d first moved into the tower, and again for several months after he’d brought Bucky in. It had gone unused for over six months now, but nothing in the tower ever got dusty, so it was as clean as the day they’d left it. Not a lot of personal effects, and a lot of empty spaces on the walls where they’d removed Steve’s art to take with them upstairs, but at least it had furniture. And, most importantly, Sam, waiting for them on the sofa. 

“Hey,” Sam said, standing. “Everything okay? JARVIS said you needed an assist.”

“Yeah.” Steve led Bucky over to the sofa and sat him down. Bucky moved willingly where Steve put him, unresisting. He leaned forward, letting his hair fall around his face in a curtain, blocking his eyes from Steve’s view. Steve didn’t need to see them to know he was teetering on the verge of a major dissociative episode. And if that happened, they’d probably need more than Sam. “JARVIS, wake Nat for me, please. Tell her we need her up here.”

“What the hell is going on?” Sam demanded, staring at Bucky. “He hasn’t looked this bad in _months_.”

“I know,” Steve said, a little desperately. “And normally there’d be nothing that could tear me away from him, you know that, but Tony is downstairs with Bruce, and he’s on the verge of a mental breakdown, and I can’t be in two places at once.”

Sam’s eyes widened. “What––”

“Long story short, Hydra used Bucky to kill Tony’s parents. Someone thought that was information Tony should have and sent him the video.”

Sam’s jaw dropped. “What the actual fuck? Who would––”

“I don’t know,” Steve said grimly. “Believe me, that is on my list, right after getting through the next twelve hours. Hell, the next twelve _minutes_.”

“Yeah, shit.” Sam reached out and squeezed Steve’s shoulder. “I got your back, all right? And Nat and Bruce do, too.”

“Thank you,” Steve said, his throat suddenly tight. He reached up and covered Sam’s hand with his own. “Thanks.”

Sam nodded. “Go. I got this. I’ll fill Nat in when she gets here.”

Steve went and knelt down in front of Bucky. “Buck? Hey, Bucky? Can you look at me?” Bucky managed a twitch, which was the best Steve thought he’d do under the circumstances. “Sam’s here, and Nat’s on her way. I have to get back to Tony, but I’ll come check on you in an hour or two. Okay?”

Bucky’s chin jerked downward. Steve supposed that counted as a nod. 

“Please,” Steve said quietly. “Don’t do anything that can’t be undone.”

Bucky didn’t move for a long time. Then his chin jerked downward again. Steve let out a long breath and rose up to kiss Bucky on the forehead. “Thank you,” he murmured to Sam on his way out. 

He decided to take the stairs back down to the workshop, rather than waiting for the elevator. He was faster, anyway, and now that Bucky was settled––more or less––Steve wanted to lay eyes on Tony again. And he had to keep moving. If he stopped, he’d think about it all too hard, and he sensed that that would be... bad. Tony needed him. Bucky needed him. And he couldn’t help them if he was railing against the unfairness of the three of them finally carving out something like happiness together only to have it snatched from them in the cruelest way possible. 

Bruce had succeeded in getting Tony to move to the workshop sofa. Tony had apparently then attached himself to Bruce like a limpet. Bruce had both arms wrapped around him, just holding on, and he looked inordinately relieved to see Steve. 

“Hey,” Steve said quietly, taking in Bruce as well as Tony with his greeting. He crouched down next to the sofa and put his hand on Tony’s shoulder. “How’re you doing?”

Tony looked away. “I really wish I hadn’t dumped out all my liquor two years ago.”

Steve was really glad he had. “It wouldn’t help, sweetheart, you know that.”

“Depends on your definition of ‘help.’ I wouldn’t feel like _this_ anymore.” Tony frowned at Steve. “You came back.”

Steve frowned back at him. “Of course I came back. I told you I would.”

“Don’t see how that figures into it. People make all kinds of promises they don’t intend to keep.”

Steve glanced at Bruce, who simply looked sad. “Does that sound like me, Tony?”

“Don’t do that,” Tony snapped. 

“Do what?”

“That thing where––where you say my name like you think I’m going crazy. I’m not going crazy.” Tony let go of Bruce suddenly and sat up. He scrubbed his hands through his hair. “Fuck, I’m not going crazy.”

“You’re not,” Steve said, looking up at him now. “I don’t think you are. But I can’t get a bead on what you’re thinking or feeling, so I’m being careful. That’s all. I’m not trying to be condescending, I promise, I’m just trying to be careful, because––because I’m worried I might make things worse, somehow. That’s all.”

The bald honesty seemed to take the wind out of Tony’s sails. He slumped a little, looking down at Steve. “Is––is Bucky okay?”

Steve sighed. He slid onto the sofa and took Tony’s hand in his. On Tony’s other side, Bruce sat up, watching them both carefully. “No,” Steve said honestly. “He was on the verge of dissociating. This is pretty much his nightmare, I think.”

Tony nodded. He ducked his head, refusing to meet Steve’s eyes. “It sounds like he really needs you. You should––you should be with him.”

“Sam and Nat are with him. They know what to do.”

Tony shook his head. “They’re not _you_ , though. I’m not about to have a psychotic break. And Bruce is here.”

Steve stared at Tony flatly. “Tony, stop trying to get me to leave. I’m not going to. Bucky wouldn’t want me to. And _you_ don’t really want me to, either, so... just stop. Please.”

“Damn you, Rogers, you know all my tricks.” Tony leaned forward and put his head in his hands, pulling at his temples. “God, my head is splitting.”

Bruce took Tony’s hand––the one that Steve wasn’t holding––in his and pinched the skin on the back of it. “You’re dehydrated,” he said. “Let’s go upstairs to the penthouse, and I’ll give you an IV line. You should eat something, too, if you can.”

Tony nodded, looking unenthused by the idea of food. But he let Steve help him to his feet, and he leaned subtly into him as they left the workshop. In the elevator, Steve slipped his arm around Tony’s shoulders and pressed a kiss to his hair. He felt more than heard the hitch in Tony’s breathing, the not-quite-a-sob. 

The bedroom was covered in the odds and ends of the life the three of them had together. Steve saw Tony’s eye catch on a pair of Bucky’s pajama pants, abandoned on a chair in the corner, and the two coffee cups none of them had picked up after Bucky and Tony had drunk coffee in bed yesterday morning. Steve ached, remembering the morning they’d had yesterday. It had been so sweet. If he’d known it might be the last, he’d have paid more attention. 

But no. No. He couldn’t believe that this was it. Surely once Tony had had some time, he’d understand that it hadn’t been Bucky. Bucky had had no choice. Tony knew that. 

But Steve knew that there was a difference between knowing something, intellectually, and _knowing_ something, deep in your bones, and the former didn’t always equal the latter. Tony might know that it hadn’t been Bucky who killed his parents, but he might not ever be able to look at him without seeing his face in the last few frames of the tape. And if that was the case, then Steve would have an excruciating decision to make. 

Just the thought of it was enough to make Steve feel sick. To leave Tony, when none of this was his doing, was unthinkable. Tony went through life expecting to be abandoned at any moment. Steve and Bucky had decided early on that they would prove him wrong as often as possible. But to leave Bucky, whom Steve had loved for so long, whom Steve knew he would always love, no matter what––that was also unthinkable. 

“Hey,” Bruce said quietly, prodding at Tony. “Into bed, all right? Steve, can you do me a favor and go make some of this tea?” He handed him the canister. “And a sandwich for Tony?”

“Sure,” Steve said, glad for a reason to momentarily escape the room. 

They had turkey and cheese and some wheat bread. Steve made up a sandwich while the water boiled, doing his best to keep his mind blank so he wouldn’t start spinning worst-case scenarios. Tony had had a shock, he reminded himself. He needed time. It didn’t mean he was going to make any permanent decisions. 

Steve’s comlink beeped. Steve, in the process of pouring hot water into a mug, swore. If this was an assemble, they were fucked. “Rogers,” he said. 

“Steve,” Sam said. “I know you don’t want to leave Tony, but you need to get up here. Bucky is...”

“What?” Steve demanded, drying his hands on a dish towel. Bucky was _what_? Violent? Catatonic? “Sam!”

“Packing,” Sam said quietly. “He says he’s leaving. And I’m not his therapist, but he is in a really bad place, and I don’t think he should be going anywhere.”

“Jesus Christ,” Steve said, pinching the bridge of his nose. “No, definitely not. Keep him there. I’ll be right up.”

He grabbed the mug and the sandwich and went back into the bedroom. Tony was sitting up against the headboard, and Bruce was just hanging a bag of saline on a portable IV stand. “Tea and a sandwich,” Steve said, trying to keep his voice even. 

“Thanks,” Tony said, accepting them without a trace of his usual sass. “Everything okay? Thought I heard you on the comlink.”

Steve grimaced. “Sam called. Bucky is trying to leave. I need to go stop him, if I can.”

“Oh,” Tony said softly. “Yeah, of course.”

“I’m sorry. It’s just––I’m really afraid he’s going to hurt himself, and if he leaves we won’t ever find him again.”

Tony shrugged. “It’s okay, Steve. I’m just going to sit here and suck up fluids and nutrients. You can’t help with that.”

Steve knew that tone. That tone was Tony pretending not to care, because he cared far too much, in truth. “I’m coming back, all right? I promise. I’m not leaving, I’m just going upstairs.”

“Sure,” Tony said, tonelessly. 

Steve exchanged a frustrated look with Bruce. Then he leaned down and kissed Tony, once, twice. “I love you,” he told Tony firmly, and then forced himself to turn around and walk out the door. 

***

“I’m gonna say one more time, I think this is a bad idea,” Sam said. 

Bucky didn’t bother to look at him. He was busy stuffing shit into a duffel bag and thinking stupid, soft things, like how his favorite sweater and the novel he’d been reading were both upstairs in the penthouse. He’d gotten comfortable. He’d let himself think he might be forgiven. That had been his mistake. 

“I think you need to take a beat and think about this,” Sam said, when Bucky didn’t respond to him. “This is not a good time for you to be making big decisions, especially without talking to Steve or Tony.”

“I can’t talk to Tony,” Bucky said flatly. 

“I didn’t mean right now,” Sam replied. “You guys need some time, clearly, but I can’t believe that he’d just throw you out.”

“No,” Bucky agreed, “he won’t.”

The elevator doors opened, and Steve stepped out. Bucky glanced at him, noting all the signs of stress: tight mouth, wrinkle between his brows, pale. The stress signs made Bucky want to hug him, but Bucky quashed the impulse, ruthlessly.

“Buck, what’s going on?” Steve asked, even though it had to be pretty fucking obvious. “Sam said you were leaving.”

“That about sums it up,” Bucky said, pausing with his duffel bag in hand. “What else do you want me to say?”

Steve missed a beat, startled. “Maybe why you think you have to go?” 

Bucky stared at him. “I killed Tony’s parents.”

“The Winter Soldier killed Tony’s parents,” Steve corrected. “That wasn’t you. You know that, Bucky. So does Tony, when he’s not in shock.”

“He shouldn’t have to be around me.”

“I think that’s his decision, don’t you?”

“He shouldn’t have to make it. He’ll try and put up with me for your sake,” Bucky said, looking away. “He’ll say he’s fine with it. But he won’t feel safe here anymore. He won’t feel safe with me.”

“You don’t know that,” Steve said quietly. “Neither does he.”

Bucky shook his head. “I do know it. He won’t feel safe. And he’ll always be waiting for you to leave him for me. And you can’t do that,” Bucky added, lifting his head to glare at Steve. “Don’t even fucking think it.”

“But––”

“ _No_. He needs you.”

“I know he does,” Steve said. “And I need him. But I need you, too, Buck. We need you.”

Bucky shook his head. “This was a mistake,” he muttered. “I should’ve never let you bring me in. I should’ve known it’d end like this.”

“It hasn’t ended,” Steve said, a touch of desperation in his voice. 

Bucky stared at him. “Yeah, Steve. It has.”

Steve took a step toward him, hands held out. “Bucky––”

Bucky stepped back. “Don’t touch me.”

Steve looked fucking _heartbroken._ “Where are you going to go?”

Bucky shook his head. “I don’t know.”

“I have a suggestion,” Natasha said. 

Bucky had almost forgotten she and Sam were there. She’d been very quiet, which should have made him wary. He was off his game. He needed to pull his shit together or he wouldn’t last a day. He was sure there were plenty of people still out there who’d love to be the one who killed the Winter Soldier.

“What?” Steve asked.

“I have a safe house in Brooklyn. SHIELD never knew about it. Bucky can stay there.”

“You have a safe house in Brooklyn that SHIELD never knew about,” Steve repeated slowly.

Nat shrugged. “Old habits. Gave me a place to disappear to when I needed to. It’s not much,” she added to Bucky, “but it’s a soft place to land.”

“And it’ll give us all some time to get our heads on straight,” Sam said, in a tone of relief. 

“Bucky?” Steve said, looking at him hopefully. 

To drag this out any longer would be excruciating. Bucky couldn’t imagine that Tony would ever want to be in the same room as him, much less ever want to hold him again the way he had just twenty-four hours earlier. It was over, even if Steve didn’t want to see it.

But he had no plan. Nat’s safe house would give him a few days to make one. And when he was ready, he’d go. 

“Okay,” Bucky said.

Nat nodded. “Are you ready?” she said to him in Russian. He nodded. “Then we’ll go now, before Steve decides to tail us there.”

“As though he could,” Bucky said, also in Russian, and the two of them exchanged a painful almost-smile. If anyone understood how this felt, it was probably Natasha. Maybe he could keep her. She’d keep his secrets. She wouldn’t tell Steve where he was if he asked her not to. 

“Bucky?” Steve said, frowning. 

“We’re going to go now,” Bucky said. “No use waiting.”

“Wait.” Steve reached for him again, before he remembered himself and pulled his hand back. “I don’t like this. You shouldn’t be on your own.”

“I’ll stay with him,” Nat said. “At least until tomorrow.”

“But––”

“Steve,” she said quietly. 

Steve subsided, though he looked no happier. He was still staring at Bucky, eyes wide and expression agonized. “Fine. Can we have a couple minutes at least?”

Nat nodded. “I’ll meet you in the garage,” she said to Bucky in Russian, and left. 

Sam paused on his way out and put his hand on Bucky’s shoulder. “You need anything, you call me. Clear?”

Bucky nodded. “Yes. Thank you, Sam.”

Sam squeezed his shoulder and left. 

Neither he nor Steve moved or spoke for at least a minute. Steve had asked for the time alone, so Bucky let him decide what to do with it. He didn’t know what there was left to say. 

“I just got you back,” Steve finally said, his voice tight with emotion. “I can’t stand to lose you again. Please don’t go.”

Bucky shook his head. 

Steve sighed. “Then––then promise me you won’t disappear.”

Bucky looked him in the eye. “It’s better if I do.”

“It’s _not_ ,” Steve said. “For God’s sake, Bucky, I tore the world apart trying to find you before. I can’t––I can’t live not knowing if you’re okay. And you know there are still people out there, you know you’ll be in danger, and I can’t imagine how I’ll sleep at night, not knowing if you’re alive or dead. And Tony, too––I know you think this is the end, but it’s not, it’s _not_ , and it’ll kill him, Bucky.”

Steve was wrong about Tony. But he was right about himself. Bucky knew a clean break was better, but he couldn’t bring himself to tell Steve that. Stupid. Soft. “I’ll keep in touch with Natasha,” he said. 

Steve’s mouth twisted unhappily. “Buck...”

“Final offer, Steve.”

Steve’s face crumpled but he nodded. He held his arms out. Bucky knew he shouldn’t, knew he didn’t deserve this. He didn’t deserve one last scrap of comfort to hold onto in the days ahead. 

But this wasn’t for him, Bucky decided. This was for Steve. And Steve didn’t deserve to be denied it.

Bucky nodded. 

Steve stepped forward and pulled Bucky into his arms. His breath was unsteady, his arms too tight. _Close to tears_ , Bucky thought. 

“I’m sorry,” Steve mumbled into Bucky’s shoulder.

“Nothing for you to be sorry about. Nothing you could’ve done. This was always gonna happen.”

“No,” Steve said. “ _No_. No, someone did this. Someone wanted this.”

Bucky shrugged. “Maybe so. Doesn’t matter.”

“Bucky,” Steve said desperately. “Just stay a little longer—another day. Just to give Tony some time—”

“Sorry, doll,” Bucky said. He let his voice get soft, tender. Not for him, but for Steve. “Don’t be stupid, okay? Take care of Tony.”

Steve was crying openly now, shaking his head. Bucky put a hand on the back of Steve’s neck and made him look at him. Steve stared at him with damp eyes. Bucky kissed him firmly and pulled away.

“I love you,” Steve managed.

Bucky wanted to say it back. Steve wanted to hear it, and he wanted to say it. But whatever thing inside him let him feel it was deadened and dark. “I know you do,” Bucky finally said, and walked away.

Nat was waiting for him in the garage, as promised, in a nondescript black Town Car. He climbed in next to her and the garage door opened. 

It was early, very early. The streets of Manhattan were never dead, but they were as quiet as they ever got. Natasha maneuvered the car through the city with ease, leaving Bucky to sit back and stare out the window. 

His head hurt. His chest ached.

He could let them find him, he thought. Whoever was looking for him. Death seemed... not so bad. 

But maybe they wouldn’t kill him. It was that thought—that whoever was looking for him didn’t want to kill him but _use_ him that made him determined to survive. Bucky knew that for the rest of their lives, Steve would come if he asked, no questions. He was a big, dumb, loyal golden retriever with no sense of self-preservation when it came to the people he loved. So whoever had Bucky, had Steve. And that idea was intolerable.

Nat parked the car on a nondescript street in Bed-Stuy. “Come on,” she said, climbing out. Bucky followed her, duffel bag in hand. 

The building was five stories high. Dingey, neglected. Four flights up, no elevator. Roof access, Bucky noted. Alternate modes of egress. 

The apartment was small, maybe the size of the bedroom he’d shared with Steve and Tony. Kitchenette. Small sofa. Bedroom barely big enough for the double bed. 

The walls were painted blue. That was unexpected. Calming. There were plants. Wooden furniture. Prints of sunflowers. 

This wasn’t a safe house. It was a home.

This was a gift, Bucky realized. Natasha had shared this willingly. 

He looked at her. “A soft place to land,” she murmured, repeating what she’d said earlier. “You don’t have to move on before you’re ready. You can stay as long as you want if you water my plants twice a week.”

“I shouldn’t,” Bucky muttered. 

“You should,” she said. “But tell me if you’re going to leave, so the plants don’t die.”

She seemed to be waiting for some kind of confirmation. He nodded. 

She smiled. “Good. Right now you should lie down for a while. I’m going to. We can get breakfast at the diner across the street when we wake up.”

She moved toward the sofa, leaving him the bed, it seemed. He didn’t want to rest, but he was tired. It had been a very long night.

The bed was too small and too cold, but the comforter was soft, well-worn, washed with an unfamiliar detergent. He curled up under it and closed his eyes. 

_Snap._

Bucky jerked awake, heart thumping in his chest.

It was the sound of a human neck breaking. It wasn’t the first time he’d had that dream. He had it three times a week. There was no reason for him to think that this time it was Maria Stark’s neck. Except that he was sure that it was. And he could only imagine what would have happened if Tony had been with them.

Bucky got up and got a glass of water from the tap. He drank it. His hand was shaking.

He was a monster. He’d convinced himself he wasn’t, somehow. Maybe because Steve and Tony had believed he wasn’t. He’d believed in their belief. Stupid. Soft. 

It’d be better for everyone if he’d died in 1944. Maybe it would be better if he died now.

He tried to imagine it. Not death itself, but the aftermath for everyone else. Steve’s grief would be a wild and untamed thing, if Bucky ended his own life. There would be no end to it. And Tony—Bucky didn’t know what Tony would feel. Relief, maybe. But also guilt, for feeling relief while Steve grieved. Tony might even hold himself responsible. Worse, _Steve_ might hold him responsible. Their relationship wouldn’t survive it.

Bucky sucked in a breath. He couldn’t. He had to give them their best chance at happiness. Even if he had not loved them both, he owed that much to Tony. And that meant staying alive, even if he looked toward the rest of his life with no small amount of dread. 

It was nearly seven o’clock. Bucky knew he wouldn’t sleep again, but he might as well shower before Natasha woke.

***

Tony lay in his bed with his eyes closed. He was awake, but only just; Bruce had given him something that had made his thoughts slow, dulled the sharp edges. Bruce was sitting with him now, on the other side of the bed. 

Steve had been gone a long time. Tony wasn’t sure how long. Steve had promised he’d come back, but maybe he’d lied. Sometimes people didn’t come back. If Bucky left, Steve would go with him. If Steve had to choose, he’d choose Bucky. Tony knew that. It was an immutable fact. The sun rose in the east. Water had two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom. Steve Rogers would always choose Bucky Barnes.

Whatever Bruce had given him made the thought bearable. It didn’t make him want to scream. But it did make him want to cry. If only everything hadn’t seemed so slow. 

The bedroom door opened. “Hi,” Steve said quietly.

“Hey,” Bruce said shifting on the bed.

“Is he asleep?”

“I think so. I gave him a tranquilizer a little while ago. He was... distraught, after you left.”

“I’m sorry, I know that was bad.” The bed dipped as Steve sat down. “I had to try and talk Bucky out of leaving.”

Bruce sighed. “Where did he go?”

“A safe house Nat has in Brooklyn. Don’t know how long he’ll stay there. He promised me he’d check in with Nat regularly, but he won’t—he won’t talk to me.” Steve’s voice cracked. “Sorry. This is why I didn’t come down sooner.”

“It’s okay to be upset, Steve.”

“But I can’t... I know Tony thinks I’m going to choose Bucky. And I want him to see that he’s wrong. He won’t believe me if he sees me like this.”

Bruce sighed again. “I’m not sure there’s much you can do to convince him you’ll stay except _stay_.”

“Yeah,” Steve said softly. There was a moment of silence. “God, I’m so tired.”

“It’s been a long night for everyone.”

“That’s not what I mean.” Steve audibly swallowed. “We were happy, Bruce. Not even twenty-four hours ago. We were _happy_.”

“I know, Steve.” Tony felt the mattress shift as Bruce climbed off of it. He came around and paused. “Get some rest, all right? I’m going to crash on your sofa for a few hours. I want to be nearby, just in case. If that’s okay with you.”

“Yeah,” Steve said in a watery voice. “Yeah, that’d be good.”

“If you need anything, don’t hesitate to wake me up.”

The bedroom door closed again. Steve heaved a huge sigh and got up. Tony drifted, listening to Steve getting ready for bed. He got in on the other side and curled up close, not quite touching Tony, but near enough that Tony could feel his body heat. Close enough to feel him start shaking. Not shaking, Tony realized––crying. Trembling with the effort of not sobbing aloud. Tony rolled over. 

Steve’s face was streaked with tears. He looked completely exhausted. “Goddammit,” he said, rubbing a hand over his face, “you weren’t supposed to see this.”

“S’okay,” Tony said. “Bruce gave me the good stuff. C’mere.”

“But––”

“Come here,” Tony repeated, and pulled Steve into his chest. Steve resisted for a few seconds, but finally allowed himself to be pulled in. “Thank you,” Tony whispered, “for staying. Even if it’s just tonight.”

“I’m not going to leave you,” Steve said, sounding almost angry. “I’m just––I’m hurting for both of you, and I don’t know what to do.”

Tony didn’t know what to say. He didn’t know what to think or feel, either. But it all seemed fuzzy. It was hard to get worked up over anything. “I think we should go to sleep right now. I’m really tired.”

“Yeah,” Steve agreed, “me too.” He lay his head down on Tony’s shoulder. “Will you hate me if I say I’m worried about Bucky? Nat went with him, and I think she’ll be able to protect him––from himself, if she has to, but I just... I don’t know.”

“That makes two of us.” Tony swallowed, feeling a frisson of anxiety wend its way past the wall of meds. “I don’t think I can think about Bucky right now.”

“Right,” Steve said, sounding miserable. “Sorry.” He drew a shaky breath. “Let’s sleep.”

Tony nodded. Steve went to pull away, but Tony hung onto him. It was selfish, but Tony was weak, and Steve was willing. Steve clung back, even, holding onto Tony just as hard as Tony was holding onto him. 

“Love you,” Steve whispered. 

“Love you, too,” Tony replied. He closed his eyes and let himself sink into the waiting dark. 

When he woke, there was filtered sunlight coming in the bedroom window and the smell of freshly brewed coffee in the air. Steve was still wrapped around him, and for a second or two, Tony thought it was Bucky he could hear out in the kitchen, making breakfast. But then the events of the previous day slammed into him, and he sucked in a breath. Things felt less raw after six hours of sleep, but whatever Bruce had given him the night before had worn off. Even in the light of a new day, without the shock and the exhaustion eating at him, the situation was pretty awful. And not only for him. 

“Morning,” Steve mumbled into Tony’s neck. 

“Morning,” Tony said, hand finding Steve’s at his waist. 

Steve’s arms tightened around him. “I was hoping it was all a nightmare.”

Tony gave a mirthless laugh. “Yeah, no.” He paused, taking a deep breath. “I smell bacon. Bruce must be feeling sorry for us if he’s willing to cook meat.”

“It could be Sam,” Steve said, pulling away just a little. “We have good friends.”

“Yeah,” Tony said. 

Neither of them moved. Tony wondered if maybe it would be possible for neither of them to ever move again, to just stay here, in this quiet bubble, without having any of the horrible conversations they needed to have or making any of the horrible decisions they needed to make. 

It wasn’t possible. But it was a nice fantasy. 

“Tony,” Steve said quietly. 

So much for that. Tony groaned. “Steve, I can’t. Not before coffee.”

“No, I know, I just... what do you remember of our conversation last night? You were kind of out of it.”

Tony shrugged. “Enough, I guess.”

“Do you remember that I told you I wouldn’t leave you?”

Tony’s heart skipped a beat. Literally. “Yeah.”

“I meant it,” Steve said evenly. “And I still mean it.”

Tony gave him as much of a smile as he could muster under the circumstances. “I know you do.” 

He wasn’t lying. Tony believed Steve meant it. He had meant it last night, and he meant it now. But that didn’t mean that he was going to keep meaning it. If push came to shove, Tony knew where he’d stand. Where Steve would stand. 

Steve was squinting at him like he could _see_ what Tony was thinking. And he probably could. Judging by the way he and Bucky had both found ways––subtle and not-so-subtle––to tell him they weren’t going to leave him, the two of them had been well aware of Tony’s abandonment issues, which years of therapy had not eradicated. Abandonment issues that didn’t stem solely from his parents’ untimely deaths––Howard had been cold and withholding from day one––but which certainly hadn’t been helped any by being orphaned at seventeen. 

Any progress he might’ve made was probably going to be undone and then some once Steve left, Tony reflected, weary at the idea of having to do it all over again. Maybe he wouldn’t bother. It didn’t seem worth trying to convince his own unconscious that he wasn’t going to be left at the earliest provocation, when there was such abundant evidence to the contrary. 

“Hmm,” was all Steve said, and then he leaned down to kiss Tony. Tony allowed it, then pulled away and rolled out of bed. 

It was Sam and Bruce making breakfast together. Bruce was whipping up a batch of blueberry pancakes, while Sam fried bacon and stirred a pan of scrambled eggs. 

“Good morning,” Sam said, glancing up from the griddle. “There’s coffee.”

“Thanks,” Tony said. He poured himself a cup black, and then doctored Steve’s the way he wanted it, with milk and one spoonful of sugar. He reached automatically for a third mug before stopping himself, and glanced up just in time to see Steve’s face crumple. Steve turned away, but not before Tony saw his throat working as he swallowed hard. 

“Everyone has to eat something,” Bruce declared, bringing the first plate of pancakes to the table. 

“Not arguing here,” Steve said with a forced smile. 

Bruce glanced at Tony. Tony waved a hand. “Yeah, yeah, I’ll eat. You can stop mother henning me, Banner.”

“Unlikely.” Bruce passed a hand over Tony’s shoulders on his way back to the griddle. 

“So,” Steve said, in a faux-casual tone, “where is everyone else?”

“Nat is still in Brooklyn,” Sam said. “So is Clint. He went out there first thing this morning, after I filled him in. He apparently _did_ know about the safehouse.”

“Surprise, surprise,” Tony muttered.

Steve breathed a sigh of relief. “That’ll be good for––for everyone,” he finished awkwardly, glancing at Tony. 

Tony grimaced. “You can say his name.”

Steve flinched. “Last night you didn’t want to think about him.”

“I’d prefer not to, but I recognize that that is probably not reasonable or possible,” Tony replied, not even trying to keep the snappishness out of his voice. “Anyway, I know you’re worried about him. You told me so. It’s fine.”

It was a gift from his mother, the ability to say _it’s fine_ in such a way so as to indicate just how _not fine_ it really was. Steve looked like he was reeling, and Tony knew he was being grossly unfair. He also knew he’d probably get away with it. Steve wasn’t going to fight with him. 

Bruce, on the other hand, was staring at him, as though he knew exactly what Tony was doing. Tony refused to look at him, concentrating instead on his pancakes. They were delicious, he was sure, but they tasted like dust in his mouth. 

“I am worried about him,” Steve finally said. “I’m glad Clint went out there. He wasn’t mad we didn’t wake him up?”

Sam shook his head. “Nah, he said it was better that one of us be well-rested today, in case there’s a call to assemble.”

“True,” Steve said. “God, I hadn’t even thought about that.”

Tony supposed that said a lot about how screwed up the situation was. If Steve wasn’t thinking about the team, or about their duties as Avengers, then things must really be FUBAR’d. 

The four of them fell silent after that, shoveling food into their mouths and mainlining coffee––or tea, in Bruce’s case. Tony was full after his first pancake, but Bruce slid another one onto his plate, and Sam glared until he finished his eggs. Steve mostly looked down at his plate, eating with a sort of joyless determination. 

They were being tag-teamed, clearly. Sam was here for Steve and would drag him off for training after breakfast, let Steve work some of his feelings out on a poor, unsuspecting punching bag. And Bruce was here for him, probably with an invitation to go play in the lab. Tony wasn’t sure how he felt about that. On the one hand, he really appreciated that there were people looking out for all of them. Knowing there was a safety net was surprisingly comforting. On the other hand, he objected on principle to being so obviously handled. 

He still hadn’t figured out how he felt about it when Steve sat back, wiped his mouth with his napkin, and said, “I want to try and figure out who sent Tony the video.”

Tony felt himself tense up. Not that he had ever really relaxed. “Why?” he asked warily. 

“Do you really have to ask?” Steve replied. “That video wasn’t sent out of some concern for your well-being, Tony.”

“We don’t know why it was sent,” Sam said, placatingly.

“Yes, we do,” Steve replied, looking just as irritated by Sam’s tone as Tony felt. “It’s obvious.”

“Steve,” Bruce said quietly. 

“They wanted _this_ ––the Avengers broken up in factions, distracted by internal conflict, and unprepared for the next big threat. Don’t you see?” he added, turning to Tony. “You’re the heart of the Avengers, Tony. Everyone knows it. Just like everyone knows that I love Bucky. There aren’t as many people who know about the three of us, but I don’t think they’d have to in order to realize that this would fracture the team.”

Tony was staring at his coffee cup, trying not to look at Steve. But he had to admit that it sounded plausible. “Well, it’s working, then.”

“Only if we let it.” 

Tony did look up then. “And by _we_ do you really mean _me_ , Steve? Only if _I_ let it? Like this is all on me?”

“That’s not what I said.”

“Oh, is there someone else in this room that has the right to be upset about his lover murdering his parents?” Tony asked, standing up. He had his coffee cup clutched in his hand, but he realized after a second that he was shaking too badly to hold it. He had to put it down. “What do you want from me, Steve? I can’t just wave a magic wand and be _fine_ with this!”

“No one is asking you to, Tony,” Bruce said. 

“ _He_ is!” Tony said, glaring at Steve. “You say you won’t leave me, but secretly you’re just hoping I’m going to get over it. You want me to be fine listening to you talk about how worried you are about him. You want me to care how much damage this is doing to the team––”

“Yes, I do,” Steve said. “I do want you to care about that. Because the team is yours, Tony. The team is your family, just as much as it’s mine or Bucky’s. Maybe even more. And I do want you to care about what this is doing to it. And we all need to care that it might be part of some larger threat––that maybe this was just stage one.”

“Fine,” Tony said. “You can care about that. JARVIS, give him whatever he needs.”

“Of course, sir.”

Steve looked pained. “Tony, we should do this together.”

“Well, I can’t.” Tony looked away, a little ashamed by the admission. “If you want to do it, then that’s up to you. But I can’t.”

“Okay,” Steve agreed quietly. “I understand.”

A sudden flood of irritation wiped out the shame. “Like hell you do,” Tony snapped. “Fuck this, I’m going to take a shower.” 

He walked out. None of them stopped him. 

He showered and dressed mechanically, trying to stamp down the simmering anger as best he could. Steve was right, he knew. Someone had wanted this. And that should make Tony determined not to give it to them––not to be so easily manipulated, not to play their game. But every time he tried, he remembered Bucky’s face at the end of the video, looking up into the camera after murdering his mother. 

Tony had loved her, despite everything. Everyone thought of him as Howard’s son, but he was just as much hers. Not many people knew that, and Tony liked that, too. Liked that the parts of him that had belonged to her were the secret ones. His love of opera and Italian cooking and poetry—those parts of him were hers.

He could almost have forgiven Bucky for killing Howard, Tony thought. For his hand in creating a SHIELD that was riddled with Hydra, for the piles and piles of blood money––hell, even for the emotional abuse he’d doled out to Tony as a child––Howard had probably deserved to come to a violent and messy end. But Bucky had killed Tony’s mother. And for that, Tony wasn’t sure he could ever forgive him. 

By the time he came out, it was just Bruce in the kitchen, loading the dishwasher. There was a fresh cup of coffee on the counter. Tony picked it up and held it without taking a sip. 

“Sorry,” he said. “About earlier.”

“It’s okay.”

“It isn’t. But thanks for saying so.” Tony rubbed a hand over his face. “He’s right, of course. I should care.”

Bruce shook his head. “Let him take care of it. He and JARVIS and Sam can get a start on it, anyway.”

Tony nodded, glad for once to simply acquiesce.

“I do have one request, though,” Bruce added. 

Tony blinked. “What’s that?”

“Stop trying to drive Steve away,” Bruce said bluntly. “You’re not being subtle about it, and it’s painful to watch. He wants to stay. Try not to make it impossible.”

Tony wished he could say Bruce was wrong, but he knew he wasn’t. It did sting a little, to realize just how obvious he was being. If Bruce had pegged it, Steve undoubtedly had, too. “It’d be easier if he just left instead of dragging it out.”

“You’re making huge assumptions.” Bruce finished wiping down the counters and threw the dish towel he was using aside. “He wants to stay. Hell, _Bucky_ wants him to stay. All I’m asking is that you let him. I know it’s easier said than done. But he loves you, Tony. Nothing is going to make this easy, but I promise it’ll be less awful if you let him.”

Tony didn’t say anything for a while. Bruce finished doing the dishes, topped off Tony’s coffee, and came to sit beside him at the island. 

Tony let out a long breath. “I’m really fucking scared, Bruce.”

“I know. It’s okay.”

“You’ll be here, right?” Tony said, hating the neediness in his voice but desperate to hear that even if Steve did leave, Bruce wouldn’t. 

“Yes, I’ll be here,” Bruce said. His hand landed on Tony’s shoulder and he squeezed. “And you know Rhodey and Pepper and Happy will be, too. We’re not going anywhere, even if Steve does. Which he won’t.”

Tony nodded. He looked down. “I know... it’s not fair, holding it against Bucky—“

“Hey,” Bruce said, “no. Don’t worry about what’s fair and what’s not right now. Give yourself some time to adjust. Be kind to yourself, all right? I know that doesn’t come easy to you.”

Tony snorted. “Watch out, Bruce. Someone might mistake you for that kind of doctor.”

Bruce smiled. “Well, I only take special cases.”

“And I’m a special case?”

Bruce snorted. “The specialest. You want to head down to the lab?”

“Yeah,” Tony said with relief, “I really fucking do. Your lab, if you don’t mind. Mine’s still...”

He wasn’t sure how he was going to finish that. _A minefield_? Or maybe just, _a mess_? Mostly, he just wasn’t ready to go back there. The twelve hours he’d spent in there yesterday, between watching the video and letting Steve in, were some of his worst in recent memory.

“Sure,” Bruce said easily. “I have some stuff cooking that I think you’ll like.”

Tony smiled. “You always do,” he said, aiming for something in the ballpark of his usual teasing tone. Bruce smiled back, but it didn’t reach his eyes. 

Even more tellingly, when they headed out, Bruce put his hand on Tony’s back. It was the sort of thing Tony did to Bruce all the time; it’d taken him about five minutes to realize that Bruce Banner never touched anyone but secretly loved it when people touched him. But that was the point: Bruce never did it back. Except now. 

“You okay?” Bruce asked, possibly detecting a falter in Tony’s step. 

“Yeah,” Tony said. He couldn’t help it; he leaned into Bruce’s hand, just a little. “Yeah, I’m okay.”

He definitely was not okay. None of this was okay. And he couldn’t see his way toward it ever being okay. Bruce must have gotten the message, because the pressure of his hand increased, just a little––maybe five percent at most. But that five percent extra was enough for Tony to feel five percent less alone. 

***

Steve really wanted to get started tracking down the asshole who’d blown up his life. But Sam wouldn’t let him. He dragged Steve down to the gym, turning him loose on the punching bags and then on the obstacle course. 

By the time he’d done the obstacle course three times, he was a sweaty, disgusting mess. And also kind of bruised, because Tony had built the obstacle course to give Steve and Bucky a serious run for their money, and Steve’s head wasn’t in the game this morning. He’d dodged a few times when he should’ve weaved.

“Better?” Sam asked when Steve staggered off and collapsed on a pile of mats. 

“Yeah,” Steve admitted. 

“Great. You hungry?”

“Starving,” Steve said, even though breakfast hadn’t been that long ago.

“Go wash your sweaty ass off and meet me in my apartment. I brought some leftovers back from dinner at my parents’ house on Sunday.”

Steve knew damn well how Sam hoarded his mother’s cooking. Anyone who got treated to leftovers was either someone Sam liked a lot or someone he felt deeply sorry for. Steve had the feeling he fulfilled both criteria at the moment. “Thanks, Sam.”

Sam shook his head. “Don’t thank me. My mama would have my hide if she saw you looking this sad and I hadn’t fed you up.”

Steve had to smile. “Every time you talk about her, it reminds me of Bucky’s mom.”

“Moms are moms,” Sam agreed. “Go shower.”

Steve went and showered. He also hydrated with two bottles of Gatorade while he was at it, and felt better afterward. “JARVIS, where’s Tony?” he asked as he changed into the spare set of clothes he kept in his locker. 

“Mr. Stark is in Dr. Banner’s lab.”

“Is he... okay?” 

“By my metrics, he is well.”

“And do you...” Steve hesitated. He shut the locker door and leaned on it, pressing his fist against his forehead. “Do you have readings on Bucky?”

“Sergeant Barnes has not removed his Avengers comlink, so I am still receiving readings from him.”

“And he’s still in Brooklyn? And he’s—-he’s okay too?”

“He is still in Brooklyn, though I am barred from telling you more precisely where by Agent Romanoff. He is not in physical distress at the moment. He slept poorly.”

“Okay.” Steve swallowed. “I don’t want to ask you to spy on him for me, but if he takes off the comlink or leaves Brooklyn, will you let me know?”

“Yes, Captain,” JARVIS said, almost gently. 

“Thanks.” Steve pushed himself away from the locker, ran a hand through his damp hair, and went to meet Sam.

The smell of reheated mac and cheese hit Steve’s nose when he was still halfway down the hall. He was outside Sam’s door and about to knock when he heard Sam say, “—total clusterfuck on this end. Not that I envy you dealing with Bucky, but Tony is being, well, Tony, and Steve is walking around looking like a kicked puppy.”

Steve frowned, a little indignantly. He was about to shove the door open and tell Sam off, when Sam said, “So how _is_ Bucky?”

Steve paused, very much wanting the answer to that question, too.

“Yeah,” Sam said after a few seconds, unhelpfully. “That’s not surprising. But you don’t think he’s a danger to himself?” He paused, and Steve held his breath. “Well, _grimly determined to live_ is still _determined to live_. I’ll take it under the circumstances. You still think he’s gonna bolt?”

This time, Sam was silent for a long time. Steve pressed himself against the door, straining the limits of his hearing, but there was nothing. “Yeah,” Sam finally said. “I hear you. Listen, I should go. I have a sad super soldier to feed. Good luck, all right? Let me know if things change on your end.”

Steve padded back down the hallway, counted out ten seconds in his head, then retraced his steps and knocked. 

“Come in!” Sam called. Steve opened the door. “Hope you’re hungry. I ate the last of the chicken for dinner last night, but I got mountains of mac and cheese and creamed spinach. I thought I’d fry up some sausage and we’d glop it all in the same pot.”

“Sure,” Steve said, shrugging. He sat at Sam’s kitchen island and watched him work. He wondered if it would really do any good to pretend he hadn’t heard what he’d heard. Sam hadn’t intended him to hear, but he also hadn’t said anything he’d be embarrassed about.

“So, things are okay in Brooklyn?” he finally said, over the sizzle of frying sausage.

Sam groaned. “I should’ve known better than to try and slip something past your damn super hearing. Yeah, it seems like things are... stable. Not getting worse, anyway. Nat said Bucky had a really bad moment this morning, but he got past it.”

Steve raised his eyebrows. “He talked to her?”

Sam snorted. “Yeah, no. Fortunately, Nat doesn’t need anything as mundane as words to know that sort of thing.”

“True.” Steve slumped forward and put his face in his hands. “What am I gonna do, Sam?”

“I don’t know, man,” Sam said. “It’s a mess, no two ways about it.”

Steve had really been hoping Sam would have some words of wisdom for him. “What would you do?”

“I don’t know,” Sam said. “I think this might be a situation where there aren’t any good answers, just shitty and shittier.” He paused, moving the sausage around in the pan. “Do you really think that you can let Bucky go, if you have to?”

“I think Bucky isn’t going to leave me much choice.”

“Physically, yeah. But you’ve loved him for, what, ninety years? It was one thing to think he was dead, but it’s another to know he’s alive and kicking and just not here. Are you going to be able to make your peace with that?”

Trust Sam to hit upon the thing that had been worrying Steve the most. He could tell Tony he wouldn’t leave him until he was blue in the face, but the idea of never seeing Bucky again made him feel physically sick. Tony hadn’t been wrong when he’d said that Steve was hoping he might “get over it,” though it wasn’t the phrasing Steve would have chosen. He knew that time healed a lot of wounds that initially felt fatal––sometimes, even if you’d rather it didn’t. He couldn’t deny that he hoped that someday, Tony might feel differently. 

“I have to try,” Steve finally said. “If I can’t... well, I guess we’ll cross that bridge then. But I have to try.”

Sam nodded. “Well, you know I’m here for you. Whatever you need.”

“Yeah, I do. Thanks.” Steve cleared his throat. “Speaking of... JARVIS, I know the email that was sent to Tony was anonymized and whoever it was took a lot of care to scramble everything, but is there anything you can glean from it?”

“Very little, unfortunately,” JARVIS replied. “It was skillfully done. The ISP of origin appears to be in Bangalore, but that seems unlikely.”

“Hmm,” Sam said. “Maybe there’s a different way to go about it, then. Maybe we start with a list of everyone who’d want to mess us up and go from there?”

“That’s going to be a long list,” Steve said. “Though I guess some of those people are in prison. And some of them, this just isn’t their style.”

“It does have kind of a distinctive flavor,” Sam said thoughtfully. “It’s manipulative. Cruel but not flashy. Whoever did it doesn’t want to be implicated.”

“And they went after Tony, specifically. In fact...” Steve frowned. “JARVIS, the email address where Tony received the video––is that one of his more public ones?”

“No, it is not, Captain,” JARVIS said. “Mr. Stark has a number of email addresses, all of which I monitor. This email address is one of the most closely guarded. It is the email address used by Ms. Potts and a few of his closest colleagues at Stark Industries, plus a handful of trusted people connected with the Avengers––Dr. Banner, for example. Nicholas Fury has been known to use it as well.”

“And it’s not the sort of thing someone could guess?”

“No.”

Steve looked at Sam, eyebrows raised. Sam looked impressed. “Look at you, knowing things about technology. I’d say our list just got shorter. JARVIS, could you generate a list of everyone who has emailed Tony at that address in the last year?”

“If Mr. Stark grants me permission, then yes. One moment.” There was a brief pause, and then JARVIS said, “Mr. Stark says I am allowed to compile a list of his correspondents at that address, as well as how many times they wrote, and whether he replied. I am not to allow you access to the messages themselves.”

“Fair enough,” Steve said. “Thanks, JARVIS.” 

Sam’s tablet, lying out on the counter, pinged. Sam picked it up and started scrolling. The list was much shorter than Steve had expected it to be. He and Sam spent a few minutes working through it over their food, asking JARVIS to clarify when there was a name neither of them recognized. Most of them were high-level R&D folks at Stark Industries with whom Tony was collaborating on various SI projects. 

In the end, there was only one name that stood out. 

_Thaddeus Ross_.

He’d emailed Tony eight times in the last six months; four of those times were in the last month alone. Tony had not responded to any but the first two.

Even without reading the messages, Steve’s gut said they were on the right track. Steve knew enough about to Ross to know that he was no friend of the Avengers or of enhanced individuals in general. Even more tellingly, Tony hadn’t mentioned the messages. That made Steve suspect there was something in them that he would have found upsetting, which Tony was keeping as far away from him as possible. 

It was almost sweet. Except that it had backfired spectacularly. 

Sam and Steve spent the rest of the afternoon pulling all the information they could on Thaddeus Ross from the depths of the internet and what remained of SHIELD’s servers. The more Steve knew, the more certain he became. In addition to his well-documented enmity against Bruce, Ross had been one of Tony’s main sparring partners when he’d testified before the Senate about the Iron Man armor; since then, every attempt the government had made to get their hands on it had Ross’s fingerprints all over it. Several op-eds in major newspapers about the dangers of Tony Stark and Iron Man were penned by people connected to him. 

That Thaddeus Ross hated Tony Stark was obvious. But it was less obvious what he wanted––aside from the armor, of course. 

“JARVIS,” Steve finally said, “based on your records, can you deduce what Ross might want from Tony? Or the rest of us?”

There was a brief silence. “I would suggest you speak directly to Mr. Stark about that,” JARVIS finally said, as Steve had more or less known he would. “But I can say that an analysis of the secretary’s public statements since the incident with Dr. Banner in Harlem reveals a distrust of enhanced individuals. This has become especially notable since the fall of SHIELD and the establishment of the Avengers as a singular entity.”

“I see,” Steve said, glancing at Sam. “Thank you, JARVIS.”

“Of course, Captain.”

“So, Thaddeus Ross doesn’t like the Avengers,” Sam said. “He especially doesn’t like that we’re not in a chain of command anymore. And he’s been contacting Tony to complain.”

“And Tony, being Tony, was just ignoring him and not telling the rest of us.” Steve frowned. 

“Former generals and secretaries of state don’t like being ignored, as a rule.” Sam crossed his arms over his chest and leaned back against the counter. “So he’s been sitting on this footage of Tony’s parents’ death for a while, waiting for the right moment. And then Tony ignores him one time too many and he gets frustrated. Do you think he knew about the three of you?”

Steve shrugged. “Doesn’t really matter one way or the other. He knew that this was the thread to pull on. If we’re not careful, the entire team will unravel.”

“Hard to prove, unless we’re able to trace the email back to him.”

“Yeah,” Steve said. “And even if we could prove it, unless the tape was classified, it wasn’t illegal. Tony had a right to the information. The way it was done was intended to inflict maximum damage on us as a team, but it’s nothing he can be arrested for.” Steve paused, staring down at the cup of tea Sam had made for him. “The only way to for it to not work is for it to... not work. For us not to react, as far as he can tell.” 

“Do you think Tony can manage that?” Sam asked carefully. 

“I don’t know.” Steve sighed deeply and looked at the clock. It was nearly time for dinner. He stood up, stretched, and felt his spine crack. “I need to go upstairs. He and I need to spend some time alone together when neither of us is in shock or exhausted or drugged.”

Sam nodded. “Good luck.”

Steve thought he might need it. “Thanks, Sam. Thanks for everything.”

Sam smiled ruefully. “Look, you could not pay me to date either of your boyfriends, and it’s not just because I’m not into men. But I’m rooting for you. You all have a lot of people on your team.”

“Yeah,” Steve said quietly, thinking about that morning––waking up with Tony, knowing that their friends were looking out for them. “We do.”

He didn’t expect Tony to be in the apartment; last he’d checked, he was still with Bruce in the lab. He thought he’d get dinner started so he and Tony could have a quiet evening to try and let everything sink in. But Tony was already there when Steve let himself into the penthouse––curled up in a chair by the window, a book open in his lap. 

“Hey,” Steve said. “I thought I’d have to come and pull you out of the lab.”

Tony shrugged. “My brain isn’t good for much today. I was mostly getting in Bruce’s way.”

Steve dropped his keys on the counter and pulled his shoes off in the entryway, lining them up next to Tony’s––and a pair of Bucky’s. There were signs of him all over the penthouse, which Steve mostly tried not to see. “I was thinking about making dinner. Are you hungry?”

Tony shrugged. “Not really, but I guess I should eat something.” He rubbed his eyes. “C’mere. I want to show you something.”

Steve padded over and sat down on the sofa, close to Tony but not crowding him. There wouldn’t have been room for him in the chair even if he’d wanted to. Tony shifted so he could see the book that was in his lap. It was a photo album, Steve realized. The page Tony had it open to had only two photos, one on either side: one was of a woman with dark hair and blue eyes posing for a formal portrait; the photo was a little faded but her beauty made it bright. The other photo was of the same woman holding a tiny, dark-haired child on her lap. 

The child was Tony, Steve knew without having to be told. And the woman was Maria Stark. 

“I hadn’t pulled this out in years,” Tony said, smoothing his hand over the plastic sheet that covered the photo of his mother. “I don’t like looking at photos from my childhood, they’re kind of... triggering, I guess you could say. But I realized today that I couldn’t really remember what she looked like.”

“She was beautiful.”

“She was,” Tony agreed. “She was a dancer before she married Howard. And she played the piano. Taught me how to play, and how to dance. How to speak Italian, and how to make pasta. I always meant to do that for you and Bucky––make pasta from scratch. It’s fun, and it’s amazing how much better it tastes fresh. But I never seemed to have the time. I wanted to take you both to Italy, too. The Amalfi coast. It’s so beautiful. There’s a villa... I haven’t been back in years, but my mother used to take me there. I bought it when I inherited the company. The caretakers send me a couple of bottles of wine and olive oil every year at Christmas.”

“We can still go,” Steve said, unable to keep the wistful note out of his voice. 

“Yeah,” Tony said, sounding even more wistful. “Maybe.” He sighed deeply and closed the album. He picked up a mug from the end table and took a sip. Steve watched him, suddenly a little worried. Tony had been up here looking at photos by himself, maybe for hours. There was no liquor in the penthouse or the workshop, but the tower wasn’t dry. There were lots of places he could have found something, if he’d wanted to. 

“It’s coffee,” Tony said, with a wry twist of his lips. “Decaf, even. You can taste it if you want.”

“No, no,” Steve said quickly. “I believe you. Though, uh, decaf? Really?”

Tony pulled a face. “Bruce says I don’t need any ‘extra stimulation’ right now,” he said, using his fingers for the scare quotes. “He let me have it this morning because if I don’t have it at all I get a rip-roaring headache, and I didn’t need that either. But he cut me off at four o’clock, the sadist.”

Steve chuckled. “Only Bruce could get away with that.”

The corner of Tony’s mouth dipped. “Bucky. Bucky could... could’ve gotten away with it.”

“Yeah,” Steve said, ducking his head. “Yeah, he could’ve.”

Neither of them spoke. Steve wasn’t sure what to say, and Tony looked suddenly exhausted, weighed down by everything. “I’m going to start dinner,” Steve finally said. “Stir-fry okay?”

Tony nodded. “Need help?”

“No, I’ve got it. Close your eyes for a few minutes if you want to.” Steve stood up. He hesitated briefly, then leaned over to brush his lips across Tony’s forehead. He heard Tony suck in a startled breath. “I’ll call you when it’s ready.”

Steve spent the next half hour chopping vegetables and sauteeing chicken in the kitchen. He could see Tony if he glanced up, which he did from time to time; it looked to him as though Tony hadn’t picked up the photo album again, nor had he taken Steve’s suggestion and closed his eyes. He was just sitting very quietly.

It was almost disturbing. Steve had rarely seen Tony conscious and yet not doing anything; perhaps a time or two when he was ill or injured, but even then, he usually had to be kept actively entertained or he’d find a way around his restrictions. 

At last the stir-fry was ready. Steve dished it onto two plates, along with some brown rice, and poured them both some iced herbal tea. “Tony,” he said, and Tony looked up for the first time in minutes. 

“Yeah,” Tony said, unfolding himself out of the chair. He winced, as though he’d stiffened up, and Steve wondered just how long he’d been there. “Thanks. This looks... this looks good.”

Steve didn’t buy it for one second. “I don’t really feel much like eating either, but we both need to. And I think we need to talk. It’s better to do that on a full stomach.”

Tony nodded. He sat down next to Steve at the island and Steve pushed his plate over to him. Steve sat down beside him with his own, and together they dug in. 

This had been the right call, Steve decided, a few minutes later. He could feel himself starting to relax. He wasn’t sure that he could quite call Tony relaxed, but at least he looked less stressed around the eyes. Being together without asking anything of each other––not even conversation––was important. Steve decided to let the silence go on for as long as Tony would allow it.

It was longer than Steve had thought it would be. Long enough that he was on his second plate of stir-fry and Tony had finished and put his plate in the sink. He poured them both more iced tea and came back to his seat. “So, um.” Tony paused and cleared his throat, then took a sip of his tea. “You and Sam were looking into things this afternoon, I take it.”

“Yeah,” Steve said. “I know you don’t care much about it right now, but I think it’s important.”

“I do care,” Tony said, subdued. “And it is. I just was having a hard time processing everything this morning. Did you find anything?”

“Well, we think we know who it was, if not how to deal with it.”

Tony looked at him in surprise. “Really? Who?”

“Thaddeus Ross.”

Tony’s mouth fell open. “Son of a _bitch_.”

“I mean, we don’t have hard proof, but working off of who has that email address––”

“No, it makes perfect sense.” Tony glowered, and for a second Steve thought he was going to get the suit, head straight to DC, and punch Ross in the face. “I should’ve come up with that myself. I would have, if I wasn’t so––”

“Human?” Steve supplied. 

Tony glared at him, but after a few seconds, he broke and rolled his eyes. “Yeah, okay, fine. Not my fault.”

“Thank you.”

“He hates us,” Tony said. “And, well, me, specifically, but that’s not new. He can’t control us and that makes him nervous. He wants to rein us in––legally, if he can manage it, but there isn’t much I would put past him.”

“So what was the point of this?” Steve asked, wondering if perhaps Tony would have a better explanation than he and Sam had been able to come up with. 

Tony shrugged. “Sand in our gears. He probably hoped we’d do something stupid and public. Or...” Tony frowned, eyes going distant. “He was not thrilled with Bucky’s pardon, and now I have to wonder if that’s because he thinks Bucky knows where the bodies are buried. Literally.”

Steve stared at Tony. “You think this was about separating Bucky from the rest of us?”

“Either Bucky or me,” Tony said. “But Bucky is more vulnerable. No one knows what to think about him. He’s lousy at PR. And sure, they pardoned him, but reminding people of that also reminds them what he had to be pardoned _for_.”

Steve nodded grimly. “So if he left, went off on his own, it’d be easier to—to go after him. Arrest him for—anything.” It was all too easy to imagine. Framing Bucky for a murder––or an assassination––would be the easiest thing in the world for someone like Ross.

“Yep. And if you came to his defense, it’d look bad for the rest of us. Maybe drive an even deeper wedge between the two of us.” Tony rubbed a hand over his face. “Goddammit, I hate being emotionally manipulated.”

Steve reached over and took his hand, half-expecting to be shrugged off. But Tony allowed it. “What do you want to do?”

Tony stared off at nothing for over a minute, and when he finally spoke, his voice was distant. “The thing about all of this is that he’s looking for a reaction. He threw sand in our gears and now he’s waiting for the breakdown.” Tony looked back at Steve. “We can’t let him see any of it. Which means Bucky has to stay.”

Steve couldn’t pick up anything from the tone of Tony’s voice. There was almost no inflection at all. “Not necessarily. Bucky doesn’t go out much. We could probably cover up his absence for weeks—months, even.”

“Maybe. Maybe not.” Tony looked harder at Steve. “You’re not leaping for joy?”

Steve shook his head. “Nothing about this brings me joy, Tony. And it’s going to be tough to convince Bucky to come back, even if we explain all of this to him.”

“Yeah,” Tony sighed. “It’ll have to come from me.”

Steve didn’t disagree. But... “Are you okay with that?”

“Doesn’t matter if I am or not.”

“What? Tony. Of course it matters.” Steve turned so he was facing Tony head-on. “It _matters_. Yeah, we’re being manipulated, and I think we should do everything we can to avoid playing into Ross’s hands, but that doesn’t mean that you weren’t hurt by this. We can’t ignore that either.”

Tony gave a one-shouldered shrug. “I don’t see how.”

“You don’t have to see Bucky if you don’t want to,” Steve said, even though it just about killed him. “It’s a big tower. JARVIS can make sure you never run into each other.”

“And where would that leave you? Caught in the middle? You’ve been in love with him for ninety years, Steve.” Tony sounded battle-worn. “I can take care of myself, believe it or not. Maybe we should just... call it quits. I can step back for a while. I own some land upstate, we can move the Avengers up there, and Bucky can go with you. I have SI to think about, so it won’t look odd if I stay in the city.”

Steve had to pause and take a deep breath. “Moving the team upstate isn’t a bad idea. It’s not hard to see why having us in the middle of Manhattan might not be the best idea. But I don’t want to call it quits. If you do, that’s one thing. But if that’s not what you want, then I think we need to keep talking.”

Tony gave a weary, one-armed shrug. “Of course it’s not what I want. But the way I see it, I get my heart broken now or in six months or a year, and I’d rather get out now, on my terms, than wait for you to dump me.”

Steve let out a long breath. He could feel the frustration practically bubbling in his veins, and he had to remind himself that this was Tony’s Stuff. It’d been Tony’s Stuff for much longer than Steve had known him, and he’d known that it was Tony’s Stuff when they’d gotten together. It was maddening at times, to know that no matter what Steve did or what he said, part of Tony would always be expecting him to leave. Steve had thought they had nearly moved past it in the last six months; he and Bucky and Tony all worked together so well, almost seamlessly, that Steve had thought even Tony had started to relax. 

God _damn_ Thaddeus Ross.

Steve stood up. He pushed Tony’s stool around so he could stand between Tony’s legs. He cupped Tony’s jaw in his hands, thumbs stroking over Tony’s cheekbones. “I don’t know how to make you believe me. I love you. I’m not intending to leave you. I want to be with you, whether that’s here or upstate or splitting our time between the two. We can make this work, but we both have to believe that. Otherwise it’s going to be a self-fulfilling prophecy.”

Tony closed his eyes and turned his face into Steve’s palm. “I love you, too,” he murmured. “That’s not the issue.”

“I know,” Steve said with a sigh. “Come here.” He pulled Tony in; Tony went willingly, resting his head on Steve’s chest. Steve wrapped him up as solidly as he knew how, held onto him as hard as he dared, and tried to project all the constancy and devotion that he could into the embrace. 

He had to hope that it would be enough. 

“I’ll go talk to him tomorrow,” Tony mumbled into Steve’s chest.

Steve tightened his arms around Tony. “This isn’t what I had in mind when I said we shouldn’t let it fracture us. You don’t have to do this.

“I do, though,” Tony said. “Ross can’t win. He can’t even _think_ he’s won.”

Steve didn’t disagree, but the grim resolve in Tony’s voice made him uneasy. “Will you let me come with you?”

Tony gave him a very small smile. “I was counting on it.”

Steve managed to return the smile, equally small and tentative. “And what about tonight? Will you let me hold you?”

The smile faltered. “Yeah.” Tony swallowed. “Yeah, that sounds—that sounds great.”

***

Bucky had once been good at doing nothing. He could remember days in safe houses, considerably less pleasant than Natasha’s apartment, where he had done nothing except sleep, eat, and stare at a wall. It would have been nice to be able to turn his brain off now. He wasn’t particularly fond of anything that was going on inside of it at the moment. But it seemed he’d lost his knack for it along with most of his Hydra programming. 

He supposed he should be grateful. Mindless automatons didn’t fall in love, after all. But they also didn’t get their hearts broken. 

Morning melted into afternoon melted into evening. Natasha sat on her sofa, placidly reading, and Clint sprawled on the floor––casually blocking the door––doing repair work on some of his arrows. Bucky sat and stared and thought about running after so long standing still. He knew how to do it; it was like muscle memory in his brain. But it seemed like so much work. 

“All right,” Clint said, breaking the silence. “I can’t stand this anymore, just sitting here and doing nothing.”

“Some sniper you are,” Natasha muttered, not looking up from her book. 

“That’s different,” Clint said. “This is boring, and Bucky is just sitting here like a sad sack whose life is a wreck, and I really think we should be talking about what we’re going to do about it.”

“Nothing,” Bucky said. 

Clint groaned. “Come on, you can’t just––”

“I can,” Bucky said. “I murdered Tony’s parents. I’ll go away. I’ll send messages to Natasha, so Steve doesn’t go crazy worrying about me. But I don’t get a happy ending. I don’t deserve one.”

There was a brief silence. Bucky could tell there were volumes of communication passing between the other two, but he ignored them. 

“I learned a long time ago that it isn’t about what we deserve,” Natasha finally said. “Coulson taught me that.”

Bucky looked at her. It was rare to hear either her or Clint mention Phil Coulson. “What’s your point?” 

“My point is that it’s not about what you deserve or don’t deserve. Maybe you deserve a happy ending. Maybe you don’t. But if you don’t, then I definitely don’t.” 

Bucky shrugged, conceding the point. “Fine. Doesn’t matter. Tony won’t ever want to speak to me again. If I stay, it puts him and Steve at risk. Better for me to just disappear, let them get on with their lives.”

“What if he did want to see you again?” Clint asked. 

“He won’t.”

“I’m asking you, what if he did?”

Bucky sighed. “I’d see him if he wanted to.” He owed him that much. Even if Tony only wanted to see him to spit in his face, he’d see him. 

It hurt, knowing that Tony wouldn’t ever want to see him again. It hurt even more, knowing that it was because Bucky’s action had caused him irreparable damage. He hadn’t wanted to hurt him––he hadn’t been able to want anything back then––but he’d done something that had caused Tony a lot of pain, then and now, and Bucky couldn’t make that stop hurting. 

He hoped Steve was holding Tony right then. He hoped Tony was letting him. He and Steve could be prickly with each other. He really hoped they weren’t being prickly with each other tonight. 

“Then I think you should stick around,” Clint said. “Because I think Tony’s going to want to see you in the next couple of days.”

Natasha raised an eyebrow at him. “Do you have information I don’t, Clint Barton?”

Clint waved his phone around. “Texting with Sam. He says he and Steve think they know who sent the tape.”

“Who?” Natasha asked, sitting up.

“He didn’t want to put it in a text, so I guess we’ll have to wait to find out. But he said that you should stay,” Clint added to Bucky. “Just a few more days. You don’t seem like you’re real eager to leave, anyway.”

Bucky shrugged. “Got soft, I guess.” He couldn’t let himself hope. It would be better to leave. He should have left this morning. “But yeah. Okay. Just a couple more days.”

“Good.” Clint bounced to his feet. “Pizza for dinner? The place down the street is some of the best in Brooklyn.”

“Sure, if you’re paying,” Natasha said. Bucky didn’t respond but neither of them seemed to expect him to. Clint collected his wallet and left. 

Silence. Bucky listened to the sound of his own breathing until Natasha unfolded herself to her feet. “Can I touch you?” she asked. 

Bucky nodded. She perched on the arm of the chair and sank her fingers into his hair. He closed his eyes, a little ashamed of his weakness, but if there was anyone who understood, it was Natasha. 

Clint returned with pizza. Bucky ate a slice. It tasted like ash. 

The sky darkened. He was aware of the two of them speaking with each other. He imagined a long, cold, dark winter, somewhere far away from any city lights at all. Far away from anyone who loved him. 

“Barnes?”

He jerked his head up. Natasha was crouched in front of him. “You with me, Barnes?” 

Apparently not. He shrugged. She held up a phone. “Steve wants to talk to you.”

He shook his head sharply.

Natasha sighed. “You sure?”

He nodded. He’d told Steve he wouldn’t talk to him. He wasn’t changing his mind now, even if he’d agreed to stay a few days longer. He didn’t know what Steve was thinking. Talking was only going to make it worse. 

Natasha stood up. “No go, Steve. He’s not doing very well right now.” She paused. “Yeah, that sounds good. See you then.”

She hung up and turned to look at him. He wasn’t looking at her, but he could feel her gaze on him. 

“You can’t shut down like this, you know,” she finally said. “Whatever happens, you’re going to need to pull your shit together.”

“Jesus, Nat,” Clint said, words muffled through a mouthful of pizza. “He’s had less than a full day.”

“I don’t see how that’s relevant,” she replied. “If he can’t pull it together, he’s going to get himself killed the moment he steps out that door.”

“Which I’m sure he knows,” Clint replied. “Cut him some fucking slack.”

She was right. But damn if he could remember why he should care. 

He tuned out their arguing. There it was, the deep, dark place in his head that he remembered from those days in safe houses. He sank into it. 

Nat forced him to get up at some point and go lie down––on the sofa this time. Clint lay on the floor, blocking the door again. As though that would stop him if he wanted to leave. He imagined snapping Clint’s neck, stepping over the body, walking out. Careless of Clint to sleep with him so near. 

It would upset Steve. It would upset Tony, even though he pretended he didn’t like Clint. 

By morning, Bucky hadn’t slept at all. He’d climbed out of the pit in his head enough to feel tired. 

Nat wouldn’t let him have coffee. Bucky called her a word in Russian that made her throw a sponge at his head. He let it hit him, by way of apology. 

The doorbell rang. 

Bucky looked at Nat, who didn’t look surprised. “What the fuck,” he said. “It’s a safehouse.”

“Not anymore,” she said with a sigh. “Answer it. Clint, I need to talk to you in the bedroom.”

“You do?” Clint said, right before Nat grabbed him by the ear and hauled him into the only other room in the apartment. 

Bucky eyed the door. Steve. Had to be Steve. He had a vague recollection that Steve had tried to talk to him on the phone the night before, and Bucky had refused. Not that he could’ve talked to him at the time anyway. 

He thought about refusing to open the door. Natasha would be annoyed. And Steve had been a stubborn son of a bitch since 1918, and he’d waited a long time for Bucky before. Bucky couldn’t be sure he wouldn’t just pitch a tent in the hallway and refuse to leave. 

He opened the door. 

“Hi,” Tony said. 

He was wearing a Metallica shirt with a sports coat over it and sunglasses. He took the sunglasses off and tucked them into the collar of his shirt. The sunglasses had hidden the dark circles under his eyes, but they were very obvious without them. 

“You look like shit,” Bucky said. 

Tony’s lips twitched. “So do you.”

Bucky shrugged. 

“Can I come in?” Tony asked. “This hallway smells like cat urine.”

“It’s Mrs. Radway’s cat in 501,” Nat said, emerging from the bedroom. “She lets him roam around and he pees on things. Coffee, Tony?”

“Yeah, thanks.”

“None for you,” she said sternly to Bucky. “People who’ve had catatonic episodes in the last twenty-four hours do not get caffeine.”

“I wasn’t,” Bucky said. 

“You were.” She shoved a mug of coffee at Tony. “He was. Clint and I are on the fire escape if you need us. Is Steve in the car? Can I ask him to come join us?”

“Yeah,” Tony said. “He’d probably like that.”

Nat disappeared back into the bedroom. This time, she shut the door behind her. 

“So,” Tony said, taking his coffee over to the sofa. He sat down and spread out, stretching his arm along the back of the sofa. He looked relaxed, he looked like he owned the room, but Bucky knew that Tony took up the most space when he was at his most uncomfortable. Like a cat puffing itself up to look bigger. “Catatonic episode?”

“She exaggerates,” Bucky said. 

“Yeah, because Natasha is known for exaggerating.”

“It’s not your problem.”

“Debatable.” 

“No.” Bucky stared at him. “It’s not your problem. Why are you here?” 

Tony stared up at him. “Sit down, Barnes. You’re looming.”

 _Barnes_. That stung. He hadn’t been _Barnes_ since roughly an hour after they met. 

Bucky sat. On the floor, because it was closest, and because it was the furthest from _looming_ that he could get. He tried to make himself as small as possible. “Why are you here?” he repeated. 

Tony sighed. He pinched the bridge of his nose. “To find out if I can be in the same room as you. And to convince you to come back to the tower, if I can.”

Bucky frowned. “Why?”

“Because I don’t like to be jerked around and manipulated by assholes,” Tony said flatly. “Steve and Sam are pretty sure Thaddeus Ross sent that video, and he sent it knowing that it would fuck us up. I don’t want him to get what he wants.”

“So you want me to come home,” Bucky said slowly, “to spite Thaddeus Ross?”

Tony shrugged. “Yes. Also––I’m finding it pretty hard to look at you right now, but Steve is going to be miserable without you.”

“Steve will get over it.”

Tony gave a mirthless laugh. “No, I don’t think he will. And I don’t know how long it would take, but someday he’d realize that he couldn’t forgive me for not forgiving you.”

Bucky stared down at the floor. “You shouldn’t forgive me.”

“Yeah, that’s not your call,” Tony said. “That’s my call. And I’m sure as fuck not going to make it because Thaddeus Ross is a bag of dicks.” He stood up and paused, looking down at Bucky. “I came here to see if I can be in the same room as you, and the answer is yeah, I can. It’s not comfortable for either of us, but I think we’re both used to that.”

Bucky nodded. 

“So you should come back to the tower. Come back,” Tony took a quick, hitching breath, “home.”

Bucky looked up at him. Then he stood, carefully avoiding sudden movements. “You don’t mean it.”

“I do. That’s the upside to having as much money as I do, I don’t have to do things I don’t mean.” Tony paused, staring unblinkingly at him. “I’m telling you that I want you to come back. Are you going to make me beg?” 

“No.” Bucky swallowed. “What about Steve?”

“What about him?”

“Are you... the two of you...”

Tony crossed his arms over his chest. “He lives with me. He sleeps with me.” 

Bucky nodded, gaze dropping. He wasn’t sure what he’d expected Tony to say. But to live with Steve and not be with him––it would be easier to leave. Bucky knew, rationally, that they’d spent most of their lives not sleeping with each other, but now that he’d had that much of Steve, even for six months, he wasn’t sure how he was going to go back. 

“But when he’s not at home, I don’t know what he does. And I won’t ask.”

Bucky jerked his head up to meet Tony’s eyes. “What?”

“You heard me.” Tony slipped his sunglasses back on. “That work for you? Because it’s my best offer, take it or leave it.”

Bucky didn’t know what to say. He still thought that everyone would be better off if he disappeared. But Tony was standing in front of him, offering to let him come back. Offering to let him have... not his old life, but a facsimile of it. Bucky wasn’t sure that that wouldn’t be worse than a clean break, but he couldn’t bring himself to say no. 

“Yeah,” he finally said, hoarsely. “Okay.”

“Good.” Tony turned away. “Tell Steve I’m in the car. He’s got ten minutes until I leave without him.”

Tony left. Bucky stared at the closed door for sixty wasted seconds, then he turned around and went into the bedroom. 

Steve, Clint, and Natasha were crowded onto the fire escape. Clint was crouched like it was some kind of sniper’s nest, and Nat had folded herself up into a graceful pretzel. Steve was all limbs that were just barely not overhanging the edges.

Bucky didn’t want to feel a flood of relief at the sight of him, but he did. “Hi,” he said, leaning on the windowsill.

“Bucky!” Steve immediately scrambled up and tried to climb through the window without stepping on Clint or Natasha. He managed it, but only because the others were preternaturally good at dodging giant super soldier feet and hands. He just barely fit through the window. 

The moment he was through he had his hands on Bucky, pulling him in for a hug. Bucky saw Natasha gesture Clint up toward the roof, and the two of them vanished. Bucky gave in then, burying his face in Steve’s shoulder and letting himself feel relief at being back in Steve’s arms, exactly where he’d never thought he’d be again.

“Tony said you’ve got ten minutes until he leaves without you,” Bucky said, muffled, into Steve’s collarbone. “Probably more like eight or nine now.”

“I’ll take the subway if I have to,” Steve said. He pulled away to look at Bucky. “Are you okay? I’ve been so worried.”

Bucky shrugged. “Not the best I’ve ever been. Not the worst, either. Better now than I was twenty minutes ago.”

Steve’s eyes searched his face. “So you and Tony...”

“Talked a bit, I guess,” Bucky swallowed. “It’s not going to be like it was, Steve. But he says he wants me to come back. And he says,” Bucky swallowed, “he says the two of us can be together, sort of. He says he won’t ask what you get up to when you’re not with him.”

Steve’s mouth tightened. “Don’t ask, don’t tell?” Bucky shrugged. “I don’t like it. It’s glorified cheating.”

Bucky pulled away a little, surprised and stung by the rejection. “I know. It’s okay––we don’t have to. I get why you wouldn’t want to.”

Steve’s frown deepened. “I do want to. I just... I don’t like that we have to sneak around. I don’t like that he and I will have that between us. And the two of you...” Steve squeezed his eyes shut, and Bucky got a glimpse of all the grief and the anger and the sheer frustration at not being able to change things through force of will, simmering just below the surface. Everything that Steve had probably been keeping bottled up tight ever since he’d watched the video. 

“I love you both,” Steve finally said, “I’ve known that for years. But I didn’t know before we all found each other how much I would love the two of you together.”

Bucky looked at him. Steve pressed their foreheads together. 

“Maybe it’s not forever,” Steve murmured, sounding more like he was talking to himself than Bucky. “Maybe it’s just––just until Tony––”

“Steve.” Bucky didn’t want to add to Steve’s distress, but he couldn’t let that go. “He might not ever be okay with it. Are you going to be able to live with this just as it is, even if it never changes?”

Steve’s mouth twisted. “I hate it. Everything about this is awful. It’s not right, none of it is right.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

Steve sighed. “Yes. I hate it, but I can live with it.”

“Good.” Bucky leaned in and buried his face briefly in Steve’s neck. “You should go with Tony. Don’t start this off by making him go home alone.”

“Yeah, I know,” Steve said. “Kiss me first?”

Bucky nodded. Steve slid his fingers into the short hair at the nape of Bucky’s neck and used gentle pressure to tilt Bucky’s chin up. Bucky was expecting something chaste and quick––a promise for later. But instead, Steve seemed determined to pour all of the raw emotion of the past two days into the kiss. He took his time and drew it out, until Bucky was dizzy with it. He didn’t want it to end; he didn’t want to let Steve go. But then he felt Steve’s phone buzz in his pocket, and he knew he had to. 

He pulled away. “Stop. Tony.”

Steve nodded. “I know. Just... something to hold onto, you know?”

Bucky smiled weakly. He smoothed a hand over Steve’s shirt, so that it wouldn’t look quite so rumpled. “Thanks. I’ll see you soon.”

“You’d better,” Steve said. He kissed Bucky once more and then he was gone. 

Bucky hadn’t brought much with him. He was just about done stuffing his few things into the duffel bag when Nat knocked on the window from the fire escape. He opened it, and she and Clint climbed through. 

“You could have come through the front,” Bucky said. 

“The rooftop door was locked, and neither of us felt like picking it,” she said, perching on the edge of the bed. “So. Packing. What does this mean?”

“Back to the tower,” Bucky said, a little grimly. 

“Thought so,” Clint said smugly. 

Bucky could feel Nat watching him. “You don’t seem thrilled,” she observed.

Bucky shoved the last shirt into his bag and tugged the zipper closed. “Tony asked me, so I’m going. But I don’t know that this is going to be any better for me than disappearing would have been. And it gives Steve hope that things might get better, when he needs to start accepting that life as he knows it is over.”

“You don’t know that,” Clint objected.

“Yeah, I do. At least this is logistically easier. Being on the run was sounding like a lot of work.”

“Where are you going to stay in the tower?” Natasha asked.

“I don’t know. The old apartment where Steve and I lived, I guess.” 

There were a few seconds of silence. More communication passed between then. Bucky occupied himself by trying not to imagine sleeping in that apartment alone, like in the first weeks after he’d come in. Tried not to imagine letting Steve go at the end of the evening, because he really belonged to Tony. Tried not to imagine years of purgatory, neither truly condemned nor truly forgiven. 

“I have an extra bedroom,” Clint said. “And you know me, I’m only actually around about fifty percent of the time anyway. Stay with me.”

Bucky blinked. “What? No, no, I can––the apartment’s fine.”

“It’s not,” Clint said. “And I need someone to water my plants.”

“Natasha already used that one,” Bucky told him. 

“Fine. I’ve been thinking about getting a dog. Need someone to walk it.”

Bucky frowned at him. “Seriously?”

“Well––semi-seriously. I really do want a dog, and I really am not around enough for it to make sense.” Clint shrugged. “If you’re living in the apartment and don’t mind shared custody of a dog, we can make it work. We’ll go pick it out together.”

It was the first suggestion anyone had made that didn’t make Bucky feel worse. “If you’re sure.”

“I am,” Clint said. 

“He is,” Natasha added, smiling sweetly in a way that made Bucky want to check that all his weapons were still where he’d put them.

“Okay,” Bucky said. 

“Good,” Clint said. “Now let’s get going, because Natasha’s going slowly crazy from having us here.”

“Are you kidding?” Natasha replied with a roll of her eyes. “I have to move. You and Barnes are one thing, but Rogers and Stark were in here.”

“Sorry,” Bucky said to her. 

She shook her head. “Don’t be. I knew when I offered. But we have to stick together. And we’ll keep sticking together, no matter what happens.”

Bucky nodded, throat suddenly tight. But neither of them made him speak; Clint grabbed his duffel bag for him, and together they herded him out of the apartment and down the stairs. The Town Car was still there in the miraculous parking spot that Natasha had nabbed. It felt like years ago but it’d been only a little more than twenty-four hours. 

“Hey,” Clint said as they crossed the Brooklyn Bridge. He handed Bucky his phone. “Dog adoption site. Start looking. I’m serious about this.”

“Yeah,” Bucky said, taking the phone from him. He looked down at the first photo––a sweet dog with huge, sad eyes. “Yeah. Me too.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comment moderation is turned on because of a small number of assholes. I don't generally shy away from discussion, but I draw the line at being called a "garbage person" over a piece of fiction. I'm not obligated to take verbal abuse from anyone. Rude comments will simply be deleted.


	2. Interludes

The dog was some kind of unholy mix of Steve-didn’t-know-what. Chihuahua, spaniel, pit bull—it was completely impossible to tell. He hadn’t gone with Clint and Bucky to pick him out at the shelter, so he didn’t know what the shelter staff had billed him as, but to Steve, the dog looked like one of those children’s books where different animal parts were lined up to make alligator-lion-dolphins. 

He was small enough to be carried but big enough that it was definitely an imposition when he insisted on sitting on your lap. He was mottled brown and white all over, with big, floppy ears and a pointy snout that didn’t seem to go together at all. He was short-haired, aside from his tail, which had enough stringy hair on it that it needed to be brushed regularly or it got dirty. His eyes were alarmingly intelligent. 

“Everyone, meet Chewbacca,” Clint declared. “Chewy, meet everyone.”

“Did you deliberately choose the ugliest dog in the shelter?” Natasha asked, eyebrows raised.

“He was surrendered because his owner died and her kids didn’t want him,” Bucky said quietly. “He was getting depressed sitting in a cage, just lying there while all the other dogs came up to sniff our hands. But when I went in and sat with him, he came to me. He just wants attention, that’s all. And he’s really smart.”

Steve’s eyes were suddenly hot with unshed tears. Natasha slipped her arm through his.

“I’m sure he is, Bucky,” Sam said. “I can’t wait to get to know him.” Sam crouched down and held his hand out to him. Chewy sniffed at it, tentatively. “Welcome to the madhouse, Chewy. I bet you’ll fit right in.”

Steve had to admit that after Chewy had had a few days to adjust, what he lacked in looks, he more than made up for in personality. His previous owner had trained him well––which made Steve suspect that when he misbehaved, it was deliberate. Like when he stole a piece of pizza right off of Clint’s plate and ran away with it. 

It was the first time Bucky had smiled in three weeks. Even as Clint was doing his best to scold Chewy and laugh at the same time, the dog just sat there, looking at Bucky and grinning a big, self-satisfied doggy grin.

From that moment on, it seemed to Steve as though Chewy waged a relentless campaign to make Bucky feel better. He wasn’t supposed to jump on any of the furniture in the tower, but it took three days for Chewy to start co-opting the empty half of Bucky’s bed. Bucky complained about it, but the dark circles slowly disappeared from beneath his eyes. Four times a day, Chewy demanded that Bucky take him upstairs to the roof and not only let him out, but throw a ball for him for at least fifteen minutes. Steve was certain that without Chewy forcing him to leave, Bucky would have sat in his apartment for days on end.

It didn’t fix anything. Nothing was like it had been, and Steve and Bucky both struggled to find some kind of equilibrium. Even with his unofficial therapy dog, Bucky was teetering on the precipice of a long fall into depression. Steve had expected that. What he hadn’t expected was how much Steve himself was struggling. It made him feel like a heel; Tony and Bucky were the real victims here, but the ripple effects of the video on his own life were impossible to ignore. 

“Captain,” JARVIS said quietly, “Mr. Stark is on his way up to the penthouse.”

Steve blinked himself awake and looked at the clock. It was after eleven. He’d fallen asleep on the sofa with Bucky at the end of a long, shitty day––the sort of day where not even Chewy could make Bucky smile. He sat up, rubbing a hand over his face. “Bucky. Hey, Buck, wake up.”

“Mmm,” Bucky said, stirring. “Stevie?”

“Yeah, sorry. I have to go.”

“Go?” Bucky said, looking confused. Then the confusion cleared, and Steve saw the sleepy contentment evaporate as Bucky remembered. “Oh. Yeah.”

“I’m sorry,” Steve said desperately. He hated having to leave Bucky at the end of the evening, abandoning him even when he clearly needed Steve to stay. “Are you going to be okay?”

Bucky looked down. “Yeah. Don’t worry about me, Steve.”

“You know that’s not an option for me.” Looking at Bucky, slumped despondently on the sofa, Steve wondered what Tony would say if Steve told him he had to stay with Bucky tonight. He didn’t think it’d go over well; even weeks later, Steve knew Tony believed Steve would leave him. He was pretty sure that Tony would take Steve refusing to come home to him as a sign that abandonment was imminent. And if Tony thought that, then he was likely to start pushing Steve away. 

Steve kissed Bucky. “I love you. Get some rest. Tomorrow will be better.”

“Sure,” Bucky said tonelessly. Steve wished Clint were home, but he’d been gone a week now. JARVIS had instructions to call Natasha or Sam if there was an emergency, but it was late, and Steve knew Bucky would object to him calling one of them just to come and sit with him.

Steve got up, and Chewy immediately jumped up in his place, laying his head in Bucky’s lap. Steve gave him a quick scratch behind the ears, and forced himself to walk out the door.

He took the stairs, both for the opportunity to move his body before bed and to give himself a buffer. He’d have to walk into the penthouse and pretend he wasn’t gutted by leaving Bucky on his own. 

Of all the changes in his life since the video, this was maybe the hardest. Steve couldn’t tell Tony how deeply worried he was about Bucky. He couldn’t share with him anything that had happened while Steve had been with Bucky. He couldn’t even mention a movie they’d watched together. There was so much of Steve’s life that he hid from Tony now. 

Tony was brushing his teeth in the bathroom when Steve came in. “Hey,” Steve said, kissing Tony’s temple. “Long day in the lab?”

Tony spat and rinsed his mouth out. “Getting close to the new StarkPhone release. Had a couple bugs to work out, took longer than I thought it would.” 

Steve nodded. He brushed his own teeth while Tony washed his face and applied his face cream. The two of them were silent. There had been a lot of silences lately. 

They got into bed. Steve had a book in his hands, but he didn’t think he’d be able to concentrate well enough to read. 

Tony cleared his throat. “Everything okay?”

 _No_ , Steve wanted to say. _Nothing is okay. I’m angry and frightened and almost sick from trying to imagine a future that isn’t worse than the present._

But he couldn’t say that. He couldn’t say that he would have given anything, _anything_ , to have his life back the way it had been. 

“Steve?” Tony prompted, almost tentatively. 

Steve swallowed. “I’m fine. Just wondering if you’d heard from Thaddeus Ross lately.” 

In a split second, the silence between them turned chilly. “Above your pay grade, soldier,” Tony said shortly.

“What does that mean?” Steve asked, stung by the dismissive tone. 

“It means you don’t need to worry about it.” 

Steve sighed. “I wish people would stop telling me not to worry about things that are worth worrying about. Thaddeus Ross is a problem, Tony.”

“I’m aware.”

“And yet you’re not doing anything about it, or letting me do anything about it. I’m team leader, it’s my job to worry about these things!”

Tony didn’t even look up from his tablet. “This is one of those things I’m just better at than you are. I’m dealing with it.”

“So why won’t you talk to me about it?” Steve demanded. “How many secrets can we keep from each other?”

Tony did look at him then. “Is there a problem, Steve? Do we have a problem?”

They had so many problems, Steve didn’t know where to begin. “No,” he finally said. “I trust you.”

“Thank you,” Tony said. “I’ll let you know if there’s anything you can do to help with the Ross situation.” He looked back down at his tablet. Steve was left holding his book and feeling far more lonely with Tony right next to him than he would have if he’d been alone in the room. 

His worries just kept compounding themselves over the next days and weeks. He worried about the dark circles under Bucky’s eyes, about the jut of his hip bones. He worried a lot about the dissociative episodes that Bucky tried to hide from him; he’d averaged maybe one a month before the video, and now he was having two or three per week. They never happened when Steve was with him, which made leaving him on his own even harder. 

He worried about the resurgence of Tony’s engineering binges—not the all-day kind, but the two or three days without sleep kind, which he’d nearly given up. He worried about the way Tony rubbed at his chest sometimes, just to the left of the arc reactor. Heart conditions could be made worse by grief or anxiety, and even though Tony wasn’t telling Steve much more than Steve was telling Tony, he knew Tony had had a lot of both lately. 

He worried about the team. He knew this was hard on everyone. They were not in the middle of a major crisis at the moment, thank God, but Steve was all too aware that that could change in the blink of an eye, and he had no idea what would happen if Tony and Bucky had to interact in the field. Bucky had started taking part in team exercises before the video, but now he absented himself completely. When he trained, it was with Steve or Natasha, sometimes Clint. 

Sam worried about _him_ , Steve knew. So did Nat and Bruce. And they were probably right to. Steve knew he was uncannily good at putting one foot in front of the other when he had to, but it was hard. And it was made harder because he couldn’t tell either Bucky or Tony just how hard it was.

“You should tell Tony,” Sam said to him, two months after the video had blown a giant hole in their lives. “He needs to see the damage. You can’t protect him from it forever.”

“He’s still having nightmares about it.” Steve shook his head and wiped at his eyes, feeling almost angry with himself. “He doesn’t need the burden.”

“He’s your partner, Steve,” Sam said quietly. “You’re not a burden.”

“This is a burden,” Steve replied shakily. “And he doesn’t need it. And before you ask, no, I can’t talk to Bucky about it, either.” There wasn’t anything Bucky could do to make it better, and knowing just how hard Steve was grieving for their life together would make him feel worse 

So Steve got up every morning and went for a run. He came back with coffee and delivered Tony’s to him in the workshop before taking Bucky’s upstairs to him. While Tony was working, he spent time with Bucky––sparring when he could talk Bucky into it, walking Chewy, making lunch, having sex––not that either of them had much desire for it. The minute JARVIS reported that Tony was on his way up from the workshop, Steve said goodbye to Bucky, regardless of what they were doing, and went upstairs, where he said nothing to Tony about any of it.

It felt like he was fighting a current that was constantly trying to suck him under. Every day felt like a struggle to keep his head above water—and not just his own head, but Tony’s and Bucky’s, too. Steve was afraid that it was never going to stop hurting, and that at some point, keeping himself afloat was not going to seem worth the struggle anymore.

***

Tony didn’t believe in ghosts. He supposed that the existence of a soul was no longer in question, but that didn’t mean that ghosts were real. People who thought their houses were haunted were lonely. People who said other people’s houses were haunted were preying on the gullibility of the general public.

But if he had believed in ghosts, if he had believed that a place could be haunted, he thought it would be a lot like living with Bucky. 

He saw signs of Bucky all over the tower. A book left on an end table in the common area. A cup of tea on the kitchen island. A pair of boots left behind the sofa. All of it abandoned the moment JARVIS told Bucky that Tony was on his way up. 

And then there was the dog. Within a week of Clint and Bucky adopting Chewbacca, the ugly mutt of highly suspect breeding had made himself at home in the tower as though it was the lifestyle to which he had always been accustomed. Everyone adored him. He was smart, reasonably obedient, and hilarious when he did choose to disobey. He had an Instagram account and more followers than any three human Avengers put together.

He hated Tony. 

It should not have bothered him. Tony didn’t even like dogs. He hated finding fur all over the furniture and occasionally on rainy days there was a faint but disgusting eau de wet dog in the common area. It wasn’t like he cared whether the dog liked him or not, but it was slightly... annoying, to be so actively disliked in his own home.

“He doesn’t hate you,” Steve said when Tony brought it up after an evening in which the dog had flopped from lap to lap during Team Movie Night––everyone’s lap except Tony’s. He had gotten up from Steve’s lap, made a wide circle around Tony, and thrown himself down on top of Natasha. Once he’d finished making the rounds, he’d sniffed dismissively in Tony’s direction and left altogether. 

“He does,” Tony grumbled, wishing he could do a better job of pretending not to care. He pulled a pair of sleep pants on and collapsed across their mattress. “Has anyone explained to the ungrateful brat who pays for his kibble?”

“He doesn’t hate you,” Steve repeated. He paused, delicately. “But I think he may have figured out that when you’re around, someone else... isn’t.”

Tony’s mouth snapped shut. He stared up at Steve, who was carefully looking down at his book. “Seriously?”

Steve shrugged. “Dogs can sense tension.”

“Yeah.” Tony sat up and stared at the side of Steve’s head. He didn’t turn to look at him, but a muscle in his jaw was twitching. “You can say his name, you know.”

“Can I?” Steve said, still not looking up from his book. “That’s new.”

“I never banned his name from being spoken aloud,” Tony said, scowling. “You’re the one who decided that. Is it possible that the damn dog is not the only one that’s mad at me?”

“I’m not mad at you,” Steve said, wearily. “It’d be a relief if I could say Bucky’s name aloud in this apartment. I’ve been trying very hard not to upset you, and I’m sorry if I misjudged the situation.”

Tony felt like a class A jerk immediately. Steve sounded so damn _tired_. “I know. Sorry.”

“It’s fine.” 

It definitely was not fine, that much was clear. Tony wasn’t quite sure what to do with the can of worms he’d opened up. A strategic retreat seemed like it might be in order. “I think I’m going to shower before I sleep,” he said, standing back up.

“Sure,” Steve said, looking back down at his book. 

Neither of them brought it up again. The dog kept quietly hating Tony’s guts. Tony kept telling JARVIS whenever he was heading up to the common areas, JARVIS kept warning Bucky, and Tony kept coming across signs of whatever activities he’d interrupted. Sometimes he’d come up and find the entire team gathered in front of the TV, with only one spot left, beside Steve. Tony often rattled around in the kitchen for a few minutes, and when he came out he’d find that Steve had moved, swapped places with Bruce or Sam. There was still always an open seat next to him, but it wasn’t the same one. 

It was... awkward. It was even more awkward when Steve came home smelling like Bucky, like the bed they shared together on the nights when Tony was working or had an event. It was awkward when Steve showered on those nights before bed, to try and wash it away, and it was awkward when Tony found himself equally repulsed and aroused by it. 

His body missed Bucky’s body. His brain didn’t like the idea of Steve and Bucky being together without him. But the idea of even being in the same room as Bucky was enough to send him down to the workshop for a three day engineering binge. 

“Have you... thought about seeing a therapist?” Bruce asked him during one such binge, six weeks after everything went to shit. 

“I saw about a dozen therapists after my parents died,” Tony said, from where he was half-buried in the Iron Man armor. At some point, Bruce had worked out that Tony was more likely to talk if he 1) couldn’t see him, and 2) had something to keep his hands and most of his brain busy. It was really fucking annoying. “I don’t think seeing another one is going to help.”

Bruce sighed. “It couldn’t hurt.”

“Yes, it could,” Tony replied. “Therapy sucks. It’s like brain surgery without anesthesia.”

“Oh for––be a little more melodramatic, will you? It is not _brain surgery without anesthesia._ It can’t possibly hurt worse than what you’re doing to yourself right now.”

“Says you,” Tony replied. 

Bruce was quiet for a while. “I can’t force you,” he finally said. 

“Damn right you can’t.”

“But I can tell you that I think you’re being needlessly cruel.”

The wrench clattered to the floor. Tony shoved himself out of the suit and turned to glare at Bruce. “Care to elaborate on that theory, Dr. Banner?”

“Not purposefully cruel,” Bruce said. “But you have to see what this is doing to Steve and Bucky––”

“I’m sorry, am I supposed to care about what this is doing to Bucky?” Tony snapped. “He murdered my parents, and he is living in my fucking tower––”

“Because you forced him!” Bruce snapped back. “For God’s sake, Tony, this is killing all three of you––”

“Now who’s being melodramatic?” Tony returned. “No one’s fucking dying. Except my parents, I guess. Do you know he snapped my mother’s neck? Just––” Tony made a motion with his hands.

“Jesus Christ.” Bruce covered his face with his hands.

“Hey, you started it. Who made you the fucking messenger on this? Did Steve ask you to talk to me?”

“No, Steve didn’t ask me to do anything,” Bruce replied, “because Steve would rather suffer in silence than ask anything of you. I know I shouldn’t poke my nose in where it doesn’t belong––” Tony snorted “––but I am saying this as someone who cares about all of you. This is cruel, Tony. It has to change, and you’re the only one who can change it.”

“Go fuck yourself, Banner,” Tony said. “Get out of my workshop.”

Bruce threw his hands up and walked out. Tony sat, staring at the half-built suit. “Lock down, JARVIS,” he finally said. “No one gets in or out. Hold my calls.”

“Are you sure that’s wise, sir?”

“Fuck, not you, too. What is with all my nearest and dearest today?”

“Perhaps it is that we sense your unhappiness, sir, and we wish to help.”

“If you want to help, then hold my fucking calls, all right?”

“Yes, sir.”

JARVIS went quiet. Tony retrieved his wrench from the floor and buried himself in the suit. Mechanics made sense to him; circuits connected; code had an elegant simplicity to it. There was not much mechanical that Tony couldn’t fix, given enough time. But people... people were so much harder. Tony didn’t know where to begin to fix this. Or if he even wanted to.

***

Long before Bucky had been the Winter Soldier, before he was even Sergeant Barnes, he had been a good Catholic boy. He’d been an altar server, and he’d gone to confession every week, and he had known his catechism. 

The idea of limbo had fallen out of style with the modern Catholic Church. Apparently it was too mean to tell grieving mothers that their unbaptised babies weren’t allowed into heaven. Bucky’s parish priest wouldn’t have thought so; he’d have thought of limbo as merciful.

Life in Avengers Tower felt a lot like being in limbo, and Bucky had to admit that he didn’t feel it was a mercy. At first, he had thought of it as a kind of purgatory, but within a week or two, he’d realized that was wrong. He couldn’t atone for his sins; nothing he did would ever make up for what he had done. He was just trapped in an in-between space, and it was slowly––or not-so-slowly––driving him mad. He welcomed the punishment on some level, but knowing that there was no end to it––no absolution for his sins––made it in some ways worse than the punishments that Hydra had doled out. At least with Hydra, he had always known that his own personal hell would eventually end in cryo. 

He felt like a dick for complaining, even in his head. His current situation was nothing like being held by Hydra. He lived with Clint, which was annoying but also distracting. “Annoying but distracting” could be said of Chewy, who was way too smart for his own good and had the tendency to get into shit if Bucky didn’t pay him enough attention. Chewy was too hyperactive to ever be a real therapy dog, but Bucky could admit that he seemed to have a knack for knowing when Bucky was about to check out.

Clint knew how bad it had gotten, how tenuous Bucky’s grip on reality was. Natasha knew. He suspected that Sam knew. It was unlikely that none of them had told Steve. So far he’d avoided letting Steve see any of his episodes, but he was pretty sure it was only a matter of time. 

It hadn’t started out as a bad night. He’d been watching a movie with Steve and the others when JARVIS informed them that Tony was on his way up from the workshop. Without letting himself pause and think about it, he’d ripped himself away from the warmth of Steve’s body to go upstairs to the apartment he shared with Clint, who was away on a mission for Fury. Natasha had offered to come with him, but he’d waved her off, telling her to stay and finish the movie. 

The look on Steve’s face... he was gutted, watching Bucky leave. But he hadn’t tried to stop him. 

Chewy had followed him. Bucky sat down on the sofa, Chewy jumped up next to him and laid his head in his lap. “JARVIS, can you pick the movie up where I left off downstairs?” Bucky asked, feeling as though he was listening to himself speak underwater. 

They’d been watching _Moana_ , because they’d finished all the Pixar films and Sam said it was the only other recent Disney movie that was any good. Bucky had been enjoying it. But now he couldn’t track it. His body didn’t feel like it belonged to him anymore; he felt like he was watching himself sitting on the sofa, with his dog, while his mind floated along somewhere above it. 

It was tempting to just float away and not come back. Bucky thought about that a lot lately, more than he ever had since he’d come in. He and Steve and Tony had been building a life together, and that was worth getting better for. But now it was hard to remember what the point of getting better was, especially on nights when Bucky was reminded that life would never be normal again. He was trapped in limbo. 

He came back to himself to find Chewy licking his hand and whining softly. “Sorry,” Bucky mumbled to the dog. The movie was over. He stretched out on the sofa, even though he knew he should go to bed. He was exhausted. 

“Sergeant Barnes,” JARVIS said, “your vital signs indicate that you’ve had a dissociative episode. Would you like me to call someone for you?”

Bucky pressed his face into the couch cushions. “Where’s Steve?”

“Captain Rogers is with Mr. Stark in the penthouse.”

Bucky swallowed. Where else would he be? “Are you allowed to interrupt them for me?”

“Yes,” JARVIS said. “Mr. Stark has not changed any of my protocols. Do you need Captain Rogers?”

Bucky buried his face in the couch cushions. Chewy whined again and pressed himself closer. “No.”

“Then perhaps Agent Romanoff?”

He didn’t want Natasha. He wanted _Steve_. “No. No. It’s over. I’m fine.”

JARVIS’s voice was almost gentle as he said, “I am accustomed to a loose definition of the word ‘fine’ from Mr. Stark, but I think even he would consider this to be stretching it.”

Bucky gave a watery laugh. “Yeah, well...” He sighed wearily. “Is this ever going to get better, J?”

“I would need a more precise definition of ‘better’ in order to form a hypothesis.”

Bucky sighed. “Yeah. Me too, I guess. I’m really tired.”

“I’ve noted that you haven’t been sleeping well.”

“No—I mean, yeah, you’re right, but that’s not what I meant. I mean I’m... tired of existing.”

JARVIS was silent for a few seconds. “I believe I have some context for that. It is concerning. I ask again that you allow me to contact someone.”

“No. Not gonna _do_ anything about it, anyway. Already decided that the first night. Steve would never get over it.”

“Neither would Mr. Stark, I believe.”

Bucky laughed hollowly. “I think my not existing would solve a lot of problems for him.”

“It would create many more. I believe there is a high probability that Mr. Stark would blame himself.”

“Yeah,” Bucky said. “Or Steve might blame him. Like I said––I already decided. I’m just... I’m really fucking tired, J. And I wish... I wish Steve was here. But he’s not, and I can’t––I can’t pull him away from Tony. It’s all such a mess, and I don’t think it’s ever going to get better.”

His voice cracked and his eyes filled with tears. It was ridiculous to be talking to JARVIS about this, but the truth was that he didn’t feel like he could talk to anyone else. Ever since he’d arrived in the tower, JARVIS had steered him right. After Steve and Tony, JARVIS had done the most to guide him through the twenty-first century, and he’d never judged him.

“I am sorry that it is so difficult,” JARVIS said. “I wish that I could make it better for you, Sergeant.”

“You do, J,” Bucky said, drawing a trembling breath. “Can you––could you read to me? Steve was telling me about a book he liked–– _Neuromancer_ , I think it was called?”

“Of course, Sergeant. May I suggest that you move to your bed first?”

“Yeah,” Bucky said, and levered himself up. He knew he’d feel better in the morning if he slept in an actual bed, even if it was too big and too cold without his partners. “Yeah. Thanks, J.”

Bucky stripped down to his boxers and crawled into bed. Chewy jumped up on the other side and made himself at home in the nest of rumpled sheets and blankets. Steve had always made the bed, and Bucky didn’t see the point now that it was just him and Chewy sleeping there. On the rare occasion that he and Steve had sex, they mostly did it in Steve’s old apartment. 

His phone chimed just as he was about to ask JARVIS to start reading. It was a text from Steve. _Are you all right?_

Bucky didn’t know how to answer that. He was definitely not all right. He hadn’t been all right in ages, had no idea if he’d ever be all right again. But what good would it do to give Steve that kind of answer? What he wanted to know was whether Bucky was in crisis.

 _I’m ok._

_Are you sure? JARVIS said you had an episode._

“Goddammit, JARVIS,” Bucky muttered.

“Captain Rogers asked me about your well-being directly, Sergeant. I could not lie.”

 _I’m ok now._ Bucky swallowed, hesitating. _I miss you. But I have Chewy and JARVIS for company. I was going to start Neuromancer._

_Okay, if you’re sure._

_I’m sure. Stop hovering and go to sleep, punk._

_Love you, too, Buck._

“Are you ready, Sergeant?” JARVIS asked, as Bucky put his phone on his bedside table. 

“Yeah. And, JARVIS? Thank you. Seriously.” Bucky’s throat was suddenly incredibly tight and painful. “I don’t know how I would get through this without you.”

“I am glad that I may help, even in small ways. I will tell you now what my human predecessor often told Mr. Stark when he was young. Even the longest nights eventually turn into day. And they do so all the faster if you manage to get some sleep.”

Bucky gave a watery laugh. “True. Okay. Go ahead.”

JARVIS started reading. Bucky leaned his forehead against Chewy’s furry back and closed his eyes. He had to hope JARVIS was right. He had to hope that this very long night would eventually turn into day. And he had to hope that he could hang on until it did.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...sorry not sorry?
> 
> ~~Comments are love. Even if you're yelling at me for breaking them.~~
> 
> _Most_ comments are love. But some that I've been getting on this are, in fact, rude and offensive, which is why I've had to do what I did not want to do and turn on comment moderation.


	3. Part Two

The shower was running in their ensuite when Tony dragged himself into the bedroom. Tony started tugging at his tie and his cufflinks, haphazardly trying to remove his clothes. He sat down on the bed, tie and cufflinks in hand, and tried to figure out what to remove next. The shower shut off.

He was still trying to make a decision when the bathroom door opened, and Steve emerged in a cloud of faintly scented steam. 

“Hey,” Steve said, sounding surprised. He had a towel wrapped precariously around his hips. “What are you doing here? I thought you’d have left for the gala by now.”

Tony collapsed backward across the bed. “I’m not going to the gala.”

“You’re not? Pepper said she’d murder you if you didn’t show up.”

“She said that right up until this cold I’ve been fighting turned out to be the flu.” Tony coughed and rubbed at his chest. “Then she told me she’d kill me if I _did_ show up and infect all the donors. This is bullshit. Who gets the flu twice in one year?”

“It’s probably a different strain,” Steve said. “Did you go see Bruce?”

“Yep. He told me to drink hot tea and get some sleep.” Tony sighed and started struggling out of his clothes again. Steve came over to help, and Tony gave up, letting Steve undress him. He felt like such crap. “Not sure I can sleep, though. I was thinking we might, um...” Tony hesitated, feeling a little stupid. “We might watch a movie? In bed?” 

Steve, in the middle of tugging the covers out from under Tony so he could tuck him under them, went still. “Oh. Um. Yeah. I just...”

“What?” Tony peered up at him, then realized. He wasn’t supposed to be home until late, and Steve had wriggled out of going to the annual Maria Stark Foundation Gala, because Pepper liked him more than she liked Tony. Steve clearly had plans. Plans that he wasn’t keen on changing, going by the look on his face. 

“Unless I’m throwing a monkey wrench in your evening.” Tony sat up, pushing Steve’s hands away. 

“You’re not throwing a monkey wrench into anything.” 

“So you don’t have a date with Barnes?”

Steve swallowed. “No, I––I do.”

“And you want to keep it,” Tony said, feeling a sick flush run through him that had nothing to do with his fever. “You know what, that’s fine.” He pulled the covers over himself. “Do what you want, I don’t care.”

“Tony, stop,” Steve said, a note of desperation in his voice. “I want to be with you both, but I can’t split myself in two. Can you just give me a minute to think? It’s not that simple.”

“Isn’t it?” Tony replied. His head was throbbing, and there was a hot burning behind his eyes. “You left me for him once before. I always knew this would happen eventually. I just didn’t think you’d have the gall to do it when I was sick.”

“I’m not––I’m going to stay with you,” Steve said, sounding not at all pleased about it.

“Fuck you, don’t do me any favors.” Tony pulled the covers up to his chest and leaned his head against the headboard. He felt sick to his stomach, and he really wanted the tea Bruce had recommended. Maybe Steve would make it for him before he went downstairs to spend the evening with Bucky. Maybe Tony would even refrain from throwing it in his face. 

“I’m not doing you favors,” Steve said. “This is difficult enough, why do you have to make it worse?”

“Oh, I’m _so sorry_ ,” Tony said. “I’m sorry that my flu is inconvenient for you. Would you also like me to apologize for my parents’ murder?”

Steve stared at him without saying a word. Tony refused to meet his gaze. 

“I’m going to stay with you,” Steve finally said in a low voice. “I want to stay with you. But I need to go tell Bucky in person.”

“What, he can’t handle a last minute change in plans?”

“No, he can’t,” Steve said plainly, reaching for a shirt. He pulled it on, and then started digging through his drawers for clean underwear. “I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

“Or not,” Tony said. “Whatever.”

Steve threw him one last pained look as he finished dressing, before turning away and leaving the room. 

Tony lay down, burying himself under the covers. He’d just been a first class jerk, and he knew it. There wasn’t anything wrong with Steve and Bucky having plans. Steve wasn’t _cheating_. A more generous man would have told Steve to go spend time with Bucky; Tony was just going to watch some TV and fall asleep anyway. 

Instead, Tony had behaved like a child, because the idea that Steve might choose Bucky over him was so awful that Tony couldn’t handle it even at the best of times. And of course, his broken brain wouldn’t allow him to just say, “I feel really sick, and it would make me feel better to have you nearby.” He couldn’t propose a compromise either, where maybe Steve stayed until he fell asleep and then checked on him through JARVIS. No, he had to pitch a fucking fit and make Steve feel like shit and put him in the worst possible position. 

Fever, nausea, and self-loathing were really a winning combination, Tony thought, curling up in a miserable ball under the covers. 

Twenty minutes passed before Tony heard the elevator arrive at their floor again. He waited, but Steve didn’t come in. He could hear him moving around in the kitchen, but after a minute or two, even that stopped. 

Tony sat up. His head swam a little, but it didn’t stop him from getting to his feet. He grabbed his bathrobe off the hook on the back of the door and bundled himself into it before padding out and into the kitchen. 

Steve was sitting at the island with his head in his hands. Crying.

Tony stopped in his tracks, too stunned to say or do anything at first. After that first night, he’d never seen Steve cry. He was nearly silent, just a hitching of breath. 

“Steve?” Tony finally said. 

Steve jumped. He sat up, wiping a hand over his face. “Tony, hey,” he said in a rough voice. “I was making tea, do you want some?” He got up and went to the stove, filling the kettle and keeping his back to Tony. 

“Steve,” Tony said softly, again. “What’s going on?”

“Nothing,” Steve replied, keeping his head down. 

“Bullshit. Look, I––I’m sorry about earlier. I was a spoiled brat. You were totally within the parameters we set, and I had no right to throw a tantrum like that.”

Steve’s shoulders hitched. “Thank you.” 

“Now what’s going on?” Tony sat down at the island. 

Steve shook his head. “You don’t need to worry about it,” he said firmly. “You’re ill. Go back to bed, I’ll bring you some tea in a minute.”

It was tempting, but Tony knew it’d be the wrong move. “Did Barnes really take it that hard?”

Steve put the kettle on the stove and turned it on. He still hadn’t looked at Tony. “Bucky... depends on the time I spend with him. Not having time that he thought we’d have is, um. Sam said it was ‘detrimental to his well-being.’”

“Oh,” Tony said, quelled. 

“It’s fine. Natasha is with him. So is Chewy.”

It didn’t sound fine to Tony, but by the time the kettle whistled, Steve seemed to have himself under control again. He made the tea, then shepherded Tony back into the bedroom. Tony climbed under the covers, grateful to be lying down again,and Steve sat down beside him. He handed over Tony’s mug and kept the second for himself. Neither of them spoke as they drank their tea, leaning side by side against the headboard. 

Tony had known that this was not a comfortable situation for anyone, but they’d been in a kind of stasis for a long time now. If there had been a mission that required all hands on deck, forcing Tony and Bucky to deal with each other in the field, that might not have held up. But so far they’d been lucky. The workarounds they all had for life in the tower were awkward but tolerable. Or so Tony had thought. 

Even so, he’d known that everyone was waiting for him to do something and put them all out of their misery. Forgive Bucky. Decide that he was never going to be able to forgive Bucky. Pick a fight with fucking Thaddeus Ross and get them all thrown in the floating prison he wasn’t hiding terribly well out in the Atlantic. 

Well, probably not that last one, because Tony hadn’t told anyone else about the existence of the Raft, but definitely the first two. 

“Do you need to go be with him?” Tony asked at last. “Seriously, Steve.”

Steve ducked his head. “I don’t know. He... he was pretty upset. But I don’t want to leave you while you’re sick.”

“I’m not _that_ sick,” Tony said. “It’s just the flu.”

Steve reached over and brushed his knuckles down Tony’s cheek. “It doesn’t have to be life-threatening for me to want to take care of you.”

Tony found it in himself to offer the compromise he hadn’t been able to earlier. “Why don’t you stay with me until I conk out and then go see Barnes? It doesn’t do anyone any good for you to be sitting here while I’m sleeping. If I wake up and need you, I can let you know through JARVIS.”

Steve looked so unutterably relieved that Tony knew he’d done the right thing. “Okay.” Steve leaned forward and kissed Tony on the forehead. “Thank you.”

“You shouldn’t thank me for this,” Tony said, feeling even more guilty for how he’d behaved earlier. Steve shouldn’t have to be grateful that Tony _allowed_ him to spend time with Bucky, especially when it was so obviously important to Bucky’s mental health. 

Tony had spent more time than he cared to think about in the last several months dealing with his own mental health––or not dealing with it, Bruce would probably say. He had to admit that he hadn’t spared much thought for anyone else’s. Clearly there was a lot going on that he didn’t know about, probably because Steve had protected him from it. Much like Tony had protected him from knowing too much about what was going on with Thaddeus Ross. 

He’d have to think about it later, but between his headache and his fever, he didn’t have the brainpower just then. He asked JARVIS to put on the first _Star Trek_ movie and curled up against Steve’s chest. 

Steve put his arm around him and brushed his lips against Tony’s forehead. “I love you.” 

Tony sighed. “Even when I’m an asshole?”

“I was perfectly aware of your asshole tendencies when I fell in love with you. And this has been horrible for you. Just because I’m worried about Bucky doesn’t mean I don’t worry about you, too.”

Privately, Tony wondered who had been worrying about Steve. He’d been so wrapped up in his own head, it definitely hadn’t been him. Probably hadn’t been Bucky either. Sam, maybe. Or Natasha. Tony hoped it had been someone, because the idea that Steve was muddling through this on his own was awful. 

Neither of them said much, letting the movie fill the silence. Tony was peripherally aware that Steve was texting with someone, and he knew that someone was probably Bucky. He ignored it, and eventually it stopped. Steve set his phone on the nightstand and wrapped both arms around Tony. He stroked Tony’s back gently.

Tony finally nodded off about an hour into the movie. He woke up as Steve shifted himself out of bed, but he just rolled over, hugged his pillow, and fell right back to sleep. 

Staying asleep proved harder than falling asleep had been. He had uneasy, unsettled dreams he couldn’t remember, and he woke up twice, both times to an empty bed. It took him a few seconds each time to remember where Steve was. The second time he felt so anxious that he was tempted to tell JARVIS to ask Steve to come back. He resisted the urge, but after a minute or two of lying awake, trying in vain to get his breathing under control, his comlink beeped. 

“Tony?” Steve said in his ear. “Are you okay? JARVIS said your heart rate is elevated.”

“Yeah, I’m okay, I just... I’m trying not to have a panic attack. I think I was dreaming, and now I’m all ramped up.” Tony wiped a hand over his face and it came away wet. “Ugh, and I’m drenched in sweat. This is so gross. Stupid brain. Stupid body.”

“Shh. It’s okay. You’re safe.”

“I know I’m safe,” Tony snapped. “This is ridiculous. I’m going to take a shower.”

“Alone?”

“Yes, alone. I’m not going to lie here in a puddle of sweat just because you’re not here.” Tony sat up too quickly and his head swam. At least his irritation was distracting him from his anxiety. His heart rate and his breathing were both coming down. 

“I’m not sure that’s such a great idea,” Steve said. “Can you wait five minutes for me?”

“Don’t bother.” Tony took his comlink out, even though it was waterproof and could be worn in the shower. His legs felt like jelly; he had to hang onto the bedpost to stand up. He needed some more ibuprofen but he’d forgotten to bring the bottle into the bedroom and he definitely wasn’t adding a trip to the living room onto his already ambitious-seeming itinerary.

He made it into the bathroom, where JARVIS had already turned on the hot water. “Sauna function, too, J. With eucalyptus oil.” He wasn’t overly congested but he had a nagging cough, and he hoped the scented steam would help. 

He rinsed off under the spray, then sat down on the bench and leaned against the wall. Already he felt a little better. Steve was wrong. This was a brilliant idea. Though it was possible he was going to fall asleep right there.

“Tony?” he heard from the bedroom. 

“In here,” he said. Of course Captain Worrywart couldn’t stay away. 

Steve opened the shower door, letting in an unwelcome blast of cooler air. “Hey. You okay?”

“I’m fine,” Tony mumbled without opening his eyes. “Told you you didn’t have to come up.”

“It’s okay,” Steve said. “Bucky was about to go to bed anyway. Did you rinse off or are you just sitting here in the steam?”

“I rinsed off.”

“Good. JARVIS, please turn the shower off.” 

Tony mumbled a protest, but JARVIS obeyed Steve, the traitor. Tony cracked his eyes open and watched as Steve came into the shower fully clothed, albeit with bare feet. He had a towel in his arms, which he used to dry Tony off. Tony tried to help, but he couldn’t keep his eyes open. 

He blamed his fever and drowsiness for what he said next. “How’s Bucky?”

Steve faltered in towel-drying Tony’s hair. “He’s, um. He’s okay. Better. Worried about you.”

Tony gave a brief laugh. “Shouldn’t be.”

“He is, though. He––he made you soup.”

Tony blinked his eyes open. “What?”

“He made you soup,” Steve said. He tossed the towel aside and went to lift Tony to his feet. “You don’t have to eat it, but... but he wanted to help.”

“Oh.” Tony didn’t know what else to say to that revelation. He let Steve help him out of the bathroom and to the chaise longue by the window. He lay there, watching as Steve changed the sheets on the bed. 

He had a strong sense of deja vu, but instead of it being Steve changing the sheets, it was Bucky. A surge of some kind of emotion went through him, almost stealing his breath. It took Tony a few seconds to identify it: longing. It hurt that Bucky wasn’t the one changing his sheets and taking care of him. He _missed_ him.

“I’d like a bowl of soup,” Tony said, after Steve had changed the last pillowcase. “If it’s okay.”

Steve straightened up and stared at Tony, clearly taken aback. “Yeah. Yeah, of course it’s okay. I’ll be right back.”

Tony stayed on the chaise with a blanket over his legs. Steve brought him a bowl on a tray, along with some Advil. Tony took the pills with water, and then took his first spoonful of soup. 

If Tony had felt nostalgic while watching Steve make the bed, the soup almost brought tears to his eyes. Even if Steve hadn’t told him, Tony knew he wouldn’t have mistaken it for anything else––it was the same soup Tony had lived on for a week when he’d gotten sick earlier in the year. 

He looked up. Steve was sitting on the bed, watching him sadly, as though he expected Tony to throw the spoon down and refuse to eat any more, even though he’d asked for it. And part of him wanted to, still––but most of him recognized the soup for what it was––a peace offering. An apology. An _I still love you_ , even. 

He finished the soup. Steve helped him into bed and then changed into his own pajamas before crawling in next to him and curling around him protectively. This couldn’t go on, Tony thought, right before he fell asleep. Something had to give.

The next morning, while Steve was in the kitchen making breakfast, Tony asked JARVIS to shoot Pepper a text message. _Hey, you know that Japan trip you’ve been after me to take lately? How does next week sound? Think I need a few days away from NYC._

“Are you sure this is wise, sir?” JARVIS asked, even after he sent the note. 

Tony took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Actually, this might be the wisest thing I’ve done in months. Trust me, J.” 

***

Tony was packing. Tony was packing for a trip to Japan, three days after he’d been sick with the flu. Tony was spouting a lot of nonsense about his Japanese investors needing some love, and Steve finally understood what people meant when they said they just _could not even_. 

“You’re running away?” Steve demanded, crossing his arms over his chest. “To Japan?” 

“I’m not _running away_ ,” Tony said, tossing a few more boxers into his suitcase. “Pepper’s been after me for months to do this trip.”

“But why does it have to be now? You just got over the flu. You were flat on your back three days ago.”

“I can sleep in Japan just as well as here. Look, stop arguing with me about it. I’m going.” Tony straightened up to look at him and promptly rolled his eyes. “Spare me the kicked puppy look. I’m not leaving forever, just a couple of weeks. And frankly, I think it’s good timing. I can do my thing in Japan, and you can have some stability.”

Steve frowned. Of all the reasons he’d thought Tony might have for doing this, that had not been one of them. “Is that why you’re doing this?”

Tony shook his head. “Pepper really has been after me for months. But you can’t deny that this is wearing you out. It’s wearing me out. I’m sure it’s wearing Barnes out.”

Steve hesitated for a split second, but maybe Sam was right. Maybe Tony really did need to see the damage. “It’s killing him, actually. In case you were wondering.”

Tony looked startled. “Okay,” he said, clearly unsure how to react to that piece of bald honesty. “Well. I’ll be out of your hair for two weeks. The two of you can watch a movie all the way through without me interrupting.”

That was a bridge too far. It was one thing to recognize how hard this was on others and another to think that his presence was a burden. Steve planted himself firmly in Tony’s way and gripped him by the shoulders. “Tony. You’re not in my hair. You’re not interrupting. This has been really hard, and I can’t believe that you’re running away to Japan to avoid dealing with it––but you’re not a nuisance. You’re not getting in the way of my relationship with Bucky. I’m in a relationship with you, too.”

“Yeah.” Tony rubbed the bridge of his nose. “I know. Sorry.”

“It’s okay. Come here.” Steve held his arms out, and Tony sank into them. “Two weeks is a long time,” Steve murmured into his hair. “Maybe I could fly out next week?”

“Maybe. I really do have a lot of meetings scheduled.”

Steve shrugged. “I can play tourist on my own during the day. That’s not a problem.”

“Maybe,” Tony said again. 

Steve pulled away and held him at arm’s length. “There’s no reason I shouldn’t come out. Unless you’d prefer I didn’t.”

“That’s not––it’s not that I don’t want you there,” Tony said. “I just... I think I need to clear my head.”

“What does that mean?” Steve asked, letting go of him. 

Tony sighed. “I don’t know. But we can’t keep going the way we have been.”

Steve echoed Tony’s sigh. “No. We can’t.” He crossed his arms over his chest again, staring at the suitcase and trying to follow Tony’s train of thought. Steve suspected this had started while Tony was sick. Maybe it had been seeing Steve’s breakdown. Or... maybe it was something else altogether. “Is this about the soup?”

“What? No,” Tony said, just a little too quick to be believable.

Steve frowned. “Bucky was really worried that he’d be overstepping with the soup, but he was so worried about you––we both kept thinking about how sick you’d gotten the last time––”

“The soup was fine, Steve. This isn’t... it isn’t about that. Not the way you’re thinking, anyway.” Tony stepped closer, reached out and took his hand. “I just need some space. I think maybe that might do all of us some good. The soup was actually really nice. It made me think that it might be time to... try a little harder.”

“Oh,” Steve said, eyes widening. But then he frowned, because running away in order to try harder just didn’t make sense, even by Tony Stark standards. “Japan is trying harder?”

“Japan is trying to get my head screwed on straight,” Tony said. He leaned up and kissed him. “I might take you up on that offer next week. Give me a couple of days to figure it out?”

“Yeah.” Steve smiled tiredly at him. “I can do that.”

Tony grabbed his suitcase and started to leave. But Steve reached out and snagged him by the hand, spinning him around and reeling him in. Then he kissed him. And _kissed_ him. Kissed him thoroughly enough that he suddenly realized how long it had been since he had done that. Tony had been sick, sure, but it’d been a while before that. Days, at least. Maybe weeks. Tony let go of his suitcase and wound his arms around Steve’s neck, kissing him back. Giving him plenty of tongue and a bit of a grope to the backside. Steve had missed his wandering hands so much. 

“Sir, Ms. Potts is waiting for you in the car. She is becoming impatient,” JARVIS said. 

Tony pulled away, breathing heavily. “Shit. Japan. Your timing is impeccable, Rogers.” 

Steve smirked. “Just something to remember me by. I’ll see you soon, all right?”

“You’d better,” Tony said, and dragged himself away with obvious reluctance to head to the garage. 

Steve went upstairs to the roof, where Bucky was running Chewy on the dog run Tony had installed without a word to any of them, one week after Chewy came to live in the tower. It was a chilly, gray day, too warm to be considered winter yet, but with a bite in the air that foretold colder weather on the horizon.

“Hey,” Steve said, wrapping an arm around Bucky’s waist. “So, you have me to yourself for at least the next week.”

Bucky turned to look at him. “I do?”

Steve nodded. “Tony had a last minute trip to Japan. He and Pepper just left.”

Steve had a hard time anticipating Bucky’s reactions these days, but he wasn’t expecting Bucky’s expression to close off. “Why? Is there an emergency?”

Steve hesitated. “No. I think he just thought it was a good time.”

“He’s getting over the flu.”

“A point I made,” Steve said with a sigh. “But he was determined.”

“Right,” Bucky said. He looked away. Chewy came and sat at his feet, dropping a soggy tennis ball. Bucky didn’t move to pick it up, so after a few seconds, Steve did. He threw it and Chewy bolted off in pursuit. 

“Bucky?” Steve said after a moment. “Everything okay?”

“I don’t... know,” Bucky said. “Why would Tony do this? Is he...”

“Is he what?”

Bucky didn’t answer. Steve, looking at him, realized that his eyes had gone weirdly blank. It took him a handful of seconds to realize that he was witnessing one of the dissociative episodes that Steve knew happened to him, regularly even, but which he’d never seen himself. 

“Whoa, Bucky,” Steve said, reaching for him. Steve took his limp hand in his and pulled him down to sit on the ground, cradling him against his body. Chewy returned with the tennis ball, but one look at Bucky and he dropped it, whining. “Bucky, come on. Come back to me.”

“Captain, do you require assistance?” JARVIS asked through Steve’s comlink.

“Yeah, Sam or Bruce, please, whoever’s free.” He held on tight to Bucky, his heart galloping, and rocked them both back and forth. 

Bruce came out onto the roof only a minute or two later. He caught sight of them and his eyes widened. He jogged over and knelt down beside Steve on the ground. “What happened?” he asked. 

“Tony went to Japan at the last minute for two weeks,” Steve said. “I came up here to tell Bucky and he just... left.” Steve didn’t know how else to describe it. One second Bucky had been standing right next to him, and the next second he very much hadn’t been. 

Bruce sighed. “Yeah, that happens sometimes. What you’re doing is good. He’ll come back.”

“But––why?” Steve demanded. “I thought he’d be glad that we’d have at least a week to just... to just _be_. Not that I’m glad Tony’s gone to Japan, but from Bucky’s perspective it has to be a relief. Doesn’t it?”

Bruce spread his hands in a gesture of surrender. “I don’t know, Steve. I think Bucky’s feelings about Tony, about the three of you, are really complicated. I don’t know what he’s thinking.”

Steve nodded. He tightened his arms around Bucky, hoping it made him feel safe, then realized it might make him feel trapped, and loosened his grip. 

“Do you want to move him inside?” Bruce asked. 

Steve nodded. “It’s too cold for us to be out here for very long if he’s not moving around.” He shifted Bucky’s weight until he could stand and still keep hold of him. But Bucky actually stood without issue, and when Steve started to tug him indoors, he came easily enough. Chewy took up the rear-guard, prodding Bucky along from behind. 

Inside, Steve sat Bucky down on the sofa. Chewy jumped up immediately and put his head in Bucky’s lap. Steve sat down on his other side, while Bruce went into the kitchen and started making tea. 

Steve brushed the hair back from Bucky’s face, leaned in, and kissed his forehead. “You gotta come back, sweetheart,” he whispered. “You gotta talk to me.”

There was a soft inhalation, the first actual sound Bucky had made in minutes. “Steve?” he whispered. 

“Oh thank God,” Steve said. “Yeah, I’m here, Buck. Are you here?”

“Yeah, I...” Bucky’s voice was faint. “I’m here. I think.” Bucky leaned into Steve, and Steve tucked his head under his chin, smoothing the hair at his temple. 

Bruce came back, two mugs of tea in hand. He set them both on the coffee table. “Drink these when you’re ready. Both of you. You need anything else?”

Steve shook his head. “Thanks, Bruce.”

Bruce paused. “Team dinner tonight. And a movie, too.”

Steve smiled at him. “All right. We’ll see you then.”

Bruce gave him a tiny smile and a nod and left. Steve kept on holding Bucky, until at last Bucky stirred, sitting up. Steve reached for the tea and pressed it into Bucky’s hands. Bucky wrapped his hands around the mug without taking a sip. Steve retrieved his own tea; they’d been sitting there long enough that he could drink it without risk of burning his mouth. 

Ginger, he identified. Lemon. A spice that he wasn’t familiar with. And honey, of course, to raise the blood sugar. Bruce always had the best tea. 

“I, uh.” Bucky cleared his throat. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t apologize,” Steve said. “Jesus, Bucky, don’t ever apologize for that. Just––do you know what happened?”

“Yeah.” Bucky took a sip of tea. His hands were shaking. “Do you think Tony’s decided he’s had enough?”

“What? No!” Steve stared at him. “What makes you think that?”

“Because if he was––if he’d decided enough was enough, he might leave like this. Give us some time together, because after he gets back...”

“No,” Steve said, turning to face him directly. “No, Buck. If anything, it’s the opposite. He said he’s trying to get his head clear, so that when he comes back, we can––we can try again, maybe.”

“Oh,” Bucky said dully. 

“That’s good news, isn’t it?” Steve said, wishing he didn’t sound quite so desperate. “We can’t keep doing what we’re doing. This is good, Bucky. I promise.”

Bucky looked at him. “And if we try and fail? If we try, and Tony can’t––can’t get past it? What then?”

Steve didn’t know what to say. He swallowed. “I don’t know, Buck.”

Bucky leaned his forehead against Steve’s. “I can’t imagine he’ll ever be okay with it.”

“I think you’re wrong,” Steve whispered. “He loves you. He still loves you. You know what he said did it? Your soup. I think he remembered how much the two of you––you still love each other.”

“Ah, Stevie,” Bucky said sadly. “If only that were enough.”

“Well, it’s a start at least, isn’t it?” Steve replied. 

Bucky just looked at him. And that was when Steve realized: Bucky had given up. He didn’t know when it had happened, if it was recently––maybe even that very afternoon––or if it had happened weeks ago, but it had happened. Bucky had given up. 

“He’s––this is a _good_ thing, Bucky,” Steve said, squeezing his hand, hoping that he might somehow convince him. 

“I know you think so,” Bucky said, almost pityingly. “But I can’t.” He pulled away, petting Chewy absently. “I’m going to go lie down for awhile. I’m tired.”

“You want me to––”

“No.” Bucky stood up, not looking at him. “I just want to sleep.”

Steve was left sitting on the sofa, alone. 

***

Tony hadn’t been lying entirely to Steve about his reasons for the trip, though under normal circumstances he probably wouldn’t have gone. Pepper had been happy enough to arrange meetings with high-level investors and tours of the Japanese SI facilities. He personally paid to fly Helen Cho over from Korea and spent a days wining and dining her, trying to convince her to come work for him––to very little success but a fair amount of fun. 

Fun, Tony realized, was something that he hadn’t had much of lately. 

Tony hadn’t actually expected Pepper to come with him when he’d asked her to arrange the trip. She was busier than he was these days, and only sporadically in New York. But she’d seemed to take it for a given, and Tony hadn’t argued––it wasn’t like he ever _didn’t_ want to spend time with her. Even though their relationship was long over, she was still one of his favorite people. 

In retrospect, he should have realized that it was an ambush. 

The night after Helen went back to Seoul was remarkably clear of any official events. The two of them ended up at Tony’s favorite sushi bar in all of Japan, a tiny hole-in-the-wall that could only seat about ten people. They’d bought it out for the night, so it was just them and the staff. Pepper was drinking sake. Tony wasn’t drinking, of course, though it was possible he was a little loopy. The jet lag had hit him like a ton of bricks.

“So,” Pepper said, once they’d devoured their first round of sushi. She sat back, tiny cup of sake cradled in her hand, and looked at him. 

“What?”

“You know what.”

“No,” Tony said, suddenly nervous. “What?”

“I have been very good these last few months,” she said. “I have said _nothing_ about the disaster that your personal life has become, because it is not my business as your CEO and you didn’t seem to want to talk to me about it as your friend. I hope you realize what a monumental amount of self-control that required.”

“Congratulations,” Tony said dryly. “I’m sensing a ‘but’ on the way.”

“ _But_ ,” she said, “I can’t help but notice how subdued you’ve been.”

“I’ve been getting over the flu.”

“Hmm. Interesting time to take an international trip, then.”

Tony sighed. “What do you want from me, Pep?”

Pepper didn’t say anything. She sipped her sake and raised an eyebrow at him. 

Tony wished that she didn’t know him so well. He wished that that little eyebrow lift didn’t work on him every single time. 

“Fine,” he finally groaned. “Jesus, you ever talk to Fury about putting your skills to work as an interrogator?”

“They only work on you,” she replied kindly. “So. Spill, Tony. Why the sudden interest in your Japanese investors?”

Tony frowned at his glass of water. “It has come to my attention that the situation between me and Steve and––and Barnes is probably not sustainable for much longer. It’s not fair to Steve, what we’ve been doing. Or any of us, I guess. I was hoping that getting away would provide some perspective, but I’m not sure it’s working.”

“Huh,” Pepper said. 

Tony looked up at her. “What does ‘huh’ mean?”

“I’m just impressed by your level of self-awareness. I thought this conversation would be a lot more work.”

“I’m very self-aware!” Tony said, offended. “I’ve had _decades_ of therapy.”

“Though not recently, I notice.”

Tony rolled his eyes. “Well, now you sound like Bruce.”

“There may be a reason for that,” Pepper admitted. “It’s possible that he and I text.”

“You text,” Tony said flatly. 

“Natasha and I do as well,” she added. 

“Great,” he said. “So when you said that you had been incredibly restrained in talking about my personal life the last few months, you meant that you hadn’t talked about it _with me_.”

“Well, I had to stay in the loop somehow,” she said, unapologetically. “And frankly the three of you have been giving everyone in that tower an ulcer.”

“I know, I know,” Tony sighed. “I know. Pepper, can we possibly just skip to the punchline, where you tell me what you want to tell me?”

“Fine.” Pepper swallowed the last of the sake in her cup and set it down. “I’ve known you for many years, Tony. It stings a little for me to admit this, given our own history, but the happiest I have ever seen you by far was the six months that you were with Steve and Bucky. It was like you were settled in your own skin in a way that you had never been before.”

Tony sighed. “Yeah.”

“So I think you should think very carefully before you give that up. That’s all. I sensed from what Bruce and Natasha were telling me that things might be coming to a head, and I wanted the chance to say something before you made any irrevocable decisions.”

“Yeah,” Tony said again, subdued. He stayed quiet while the server brought their next course. Pepper poured herself another cup of sake, and Tony pulled a few pieces of sashimi onto his plate. “You’re right. I know you are. I just... I'm not sure we can ever get back what we had before. I can’t––I can’t _forget_ what I know.”

“I would never ask you to forget it,” Pepper said gently. “Neither would Steve or Bucky. But is that actually the problem?”

Goddammit, she knew him way too well. It occurred to Tony, rather belatedly, that he’d been avoiding Pepper and not realized it, because deep down he’d known that this exact conversation was in his future. He hadn’t been ready to have it yet. 

“Maybe not.” Tony swallowed, wondering if he could admit outloud to her what he hadn’t been able to say to Steve or Bruce or anyone else so far. “The idea of trying again with the two of them––it scares me.”

“Ah,” she said, not sounding surprised in the slightest. “More or less than flying a nuke through a wormhole?”

He smiled ruefully. “So much more. That was just my life. I know it gives you heart palpitations when I say that sort of thing,” he added, before she could say a word, “but dying doesn’t really scare me all that much. I’ve accepted the possibility that I might lose my life, but to have to live my life without either of them in it...” Tony had to stop and clear his throat with a sip of water. “I haven’t accepted that, Pepper. And I can’t.”

Pepper leaned forward and covered Tony’s hand with hers. “Then you need to fight for it. You say you’re scared of trying because you might lose them both. But I think you know what will happen if you don’t try.”

Tony nodded, staring down at the table. “I do.” 

“Also,” she added, leaning back and reclaiming her hand, “you need to find a therapist. Friends are all well and good, but you are perfectly capable of hiring someone with a bunch of letters after their name to give you the kind of feedback you know your friends can’t. Which is probably why you’ve been avoiding finding someone.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said meekly. “Though I have to say––I’ve always liked your advice the best.”

“That’s funny,” she said, and picked a piece of salmon up delicately with her chopsticks. “I don’t remember you ever following it with any kind of reliability.”

“Touché,” Tony said, and claimed the last slice of hamachi for himself. 

They walked back to the hotel together after dinner. Pepper looped her arm through his, positively towering over him in her heels, and it felt like a slice of a bygone era. Tony was tempted to remember it as a simpler time, but the truth was that he and Pepper had never been simple. They had loved each other, but they had never quite clicked. He and Bucky and Steve had clicked. 

He kissed Pepper on the cheek when she exited the elevator at her suite, on the floor just below his, and continued up to the top floor. He kicked his shoes off in the foyer, shed his jacket and his tie, and found himself staring at his phone. 

It was about eight in the morning in New York. Steve was probably just finishing his run. Tony texted him. _Free to talk?_

 _Of course_ , Steve texted back immediately. 

Tony called him. “Good morning.”

“Good evening,” Steve replied. Tony could hear noise in the background and figured he’d been spot on about what Steve was up to. He pictured Steve walking back toward the Tower, a cup of Gregory’s in each hand, because he was a secret hipster who spurned Starbucks. “How was your day?”

“All right.” Tony took his pants off and started unbuttoning his shirt. “Meetings all day. Pepper and I had dinner tonight at this place I love. She said some stuff... I guess she talks to Natasha _and_ Bruce, which kind of gives me nightmares just thinking about...” He went quiet again, thinking. 

“You realize you didn’t actually finish any of those thoughts, right? There were nouns and there were verbs but none of them really went anywhere.”

“Smartass,” Tony said fondly. “Do you want to come join me next week? 

There was a half-beat of silence. “Oh,” Steve said. “Really?”

“If you want to. You don’t have to.”

“I do want to.”

There was a _but_ in Steve’s voice. “What?” Tony asked. 

“Nothing.”

Nothing. Which was code for _Bucky_ these days. “Come on, just say it,” he said, even as his stomach sank. Somehow it’d never occurred to him that Steve might say no. It had been Steve’s idea to begin with, after all. “I can handle it. You having too much fun with Barnes to fly out here?”

“That’s not––Tony.”

Tony pulled on his pajamas. “What is it then?”

“Bucky isn’t doing well,” Steve said bluntly. “He hasn’t been for awhile, but this week has made it worse. He’s dissociated four times in the last five days, he’s having horrific nightmares, and he’s depressed as hell. I can barely get him out of bed, not that he actually sleeps.”

“Oh,” Tony said. “I didn’t know.”

“I know you didn’t,” Steve said heavily. “Anyway, I don’t––I don’t know if it’s the best time for me to leave. And I don’t think I’d be much fun if I did.”

“Yeah,” Tony said. “That’s––that’s okay.” He paused while he climbed into bed, trying to put his thoughts in order. “Do you think I should stay away longer? Would that help?”

Steve was silent. “I don’t think so,” he finally said. “I think...” He sighed. “I think we’re at the breaking point, that’s all. I’ve tried not to put any pressure on you. Bucky doesn’t want you to feel you have to make a decision. But I think... I think this might kill him. And it might kill me to watch that. I’m to the point where I think a clean break would be better than what we’re currently doing.”

“And Ross?”

“I can’t care about Thaddeus Ross right now, Tony,” Steve said heavily. “I just can’t.”

It said something that Steve was to the point of saying that. Tony had sensed that things were deteriorating, but he hadn’t wanted to acknowledge just how bad it was for Steve and Bucky. Even after he’d caught Steve crying, he hadn’t wanted to see it. 

“All right,” Tony said, making a split second decision. “Listen, I’m going to cut the trip short. I’ll be home in a couple of days.”

“You don’t have to.”

“No, I think I do. You sound exhausted.”

“So do you.”

“Yeah, well, lingering flu exhaustion plus jet lag will do that. Anyway, when I come back––I need to see Barnes, probably just the two of us.”

“I don’t know if he’s up for that, Tony.”

Tony was quiet for a bit, picking apart the implications of that statement. “Okay. What do you think is the solution here, Steve?”

“I don’t know,” Steve admitted. “I don’t know anymore. But––but you should come home. I miss you, and I––I could really use the help.”

Steve’s voice cracked at the end. Tony closed his eyes for a second, tilting his head back against the headboard, wishing he was in New York with all his being. He was starting to understand the lengths Steve had gone to over the last few months to protect him, to keep him from seeing what the situation was doing to Steve, and especially what it was doing to Bucky. And maybe that had been necessary at first; Tony had been a mess those first few weeks, he could admit that. But eventually it had let Tony get complacent. It’d let him take the easy way out, because he couldn’t see the damage.

“I have a few meetings tomorrow that I can’t cancel,” Tony said. “But I’m going to head home after that. We’ll figure this out, Steve.”

Steve drew a shaky breath. “I’m so worried about him. I know you don’t want to hear that––”

“No, I do,” Tony said. “I do want to hear that. I’ll see you tomorrow and we’ll figure it out, I promise.”

Steve’s voice hitched. “Thank you. I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

Tony disconnected the call. He sat in bed, staring blankly at the TV mounted on the opposite wall. He tapped his fingers on the bracelet idly, wondering if he should call a suit and fly back to New York right then. But Pepper would kill him if he blew off their meetings tomorrow, and it didn’t sound like it was really an emergency––not one that he could fix by going home early, anyway. 

For the first time in months, Tony thought about Bucky––really thought about Bucky. He’d tried to avoid thinking about him much at all since the video, because every time he did he ended up with his stomach a swirling pit of anger and anxiety and sadness. And he still felt that, but he forced himself to think about him anyway, to imagine what this had to be like for _him_. He couldn’t quite get there, but he could picture it well enough to know that it had probably been almost as hard for Bucky as it had been for him––possibly worse, because Tony held all the cards. 

He didn’t want Bucky to leave. He felt comfortable admitting that to himself now. He was still afraid––afraid of what else they might find out, afraid that Steve would decide this was too hard and leave him, afraid that he wouldn’t be able to trust Bucky again, and they would all fall apart. But he didn’t want Bucky to leave, and he didn’t want Bucky or Steve to suffer, and he wanted to feel the way he had before, if that was possible. 

“JARVIS, send Pepper an email,” he said aloud. “Tell her I’ll take our meetings tomorrow but I need to head back to New York right afterward. She can keep the jet here with her; I’ll fly Iron Man Express.”

“Consider it done, sir,” JARVIS said. 

Tony rolled over in his bed and closed his eyes. But it took him a long time to fall asleep. 

***

Steve disconnected the call and stood for a few seconds in the middle of the sidewalk and just breathed. He could admit, now that he was no longer on the phone with Tony, just how relieved he was that he’d be home soon. He hadn’t wanted to say anything to Tony; what was going on with Bucky––what had been going on with Bucky for months now––was only his problem if he wanted it to be, and up until now he hadn’t given any indication that he was ready for that. If things hadn’t gotten markedly worse in the last week, Steve would’ve gone on saying nothing. 

Back at the tower, he found Bucky, Natasha, Clint, and Sam in the common area. Clint and Sam were making breakfast; Natasha was sitting with Bucky, playing a card game. They’d discovered that keeping him busy and distracted was key to staving off dissociative episodes. Chewy was at Bucky’s feet, gnawing on a rawhide bone, his tail thumping happily against the floor. 

“Hi sweetheart,” Steve said, kissing Bucky on the forehead. 

Bucky pulled a face. “I’m not five, Stevie. You don’t need to start with the pet names.”

“Maybe I just like them,” Steve replied, putting his arm around Bucky’s shoulders. He sneaked a look at Bucky’s hand. “Ouch.”

Bucky swatted at him. “Don’t be an asshole.”

“So I take it you don’t want your coffee?” he replied, dancing away. Bucky’s hand had actually been pretty good, but trying to bluff Natasha was an even better game. 

“Wait, no, gimme,” Bucky said, holding his hand out. Steve handed him his coffee, and then he handed Natasha her own. He’d drunk his in the shop. This time, Bucky let him lean in and kiss him. 

It was a good morning, clearly. The best that Bucky had had in a week. Steve exchanged a look with Sam, who gave him a nod. Steve tried to enjoy it, tried not to wait for the moment it was going to turn. 

They made it most of the way through breakfast, at least. Bucky got quieter and quieter, and then he disappeared altogether while Steve was doing the dishes. He left so quietly that nobody even noticed.

“In the stairwell, Captain,” JARVIS said before Steve had to ask. 

Bucky had made it not quite two floors down before it seemed he’d just run out of steam. Steve found him sitting on the steps, leaning against the wall, staring at nothing. Steve sat down next to him and touched his arm gently. “Buck,” he said, trying to draw him back. “Bucky, come on, don’t do this.” 

Bucky’s eyes flicked up to meet Steve’s. He wasn’t totally gone. But he wasn’t all there, either. Steve stood up and tugged Bucky to his feet. Bucky followed along willingly. That was the one and only blessing about any of this: Bucky wasn’t combative, he wasn’t violent or aggressive. As much as Steve hated how passive he got, he knew that with Bucky’s training, violence or aggression would have been much harder to deal with. 

They went half a flight down to Steve’s old apartment. Neither of them slept there regularly, but they used it whenever they wanted privacy. Steve tugged Bucky over toward the sofa that faced the windows. Bucky looked wary, but he didn’t argue when Steve sat down and pulled him down to sit as well. He lay on his side, with his feet pulled up on the sofa and his head in Steve’s lap. Steve threaded his fingers through Bucky’s hair. He never got the impression that Bucky himself got any pleasure from this, but it made Steve feel better. This morning was even sunny with minimal haze.

Bucky had fallen asleep when the elevator doors opened. Steve was facing the wrong direction but he could see Sam’s reflection in the window. “Hi,” he said. 

“Hey,” Sam replied. “You need anything?”

Steve shook his head, but Sam came over and sat down anyway. Steve gave him a tired, grateful smile. 

Neither of them spoke for a long time. Steve kept his hand moving rhythmically through Bucky’s hair, and Sam just sat, silently supportive. 

Finally Steve pulled in a sharp breath. “I talked to Tony while I was out. He wanted me to come over and join him, and I knew I had to say no. So I did. And then I told him why.”

“Good,” Sam said vehemently. “He needs to know, man. You’ve been protecting him from it for way too long. And?”

“He’s coming home early. I think––I think he really wants to try.” Steve ducked his head, looking down at Bucky. His throat ached. There weren’t many people he could let see how this affected him. Nat and Sam were really the only ones. “God, I hope he does. I can’t do this anymore, Sam.”

Sam handed him a packet of tissues. Steve took one and blew his nose. “Sorry,” he mumbled. “This last week has just been...”

“It’s been rough,” Sam agreed, saving Steve from having to come up with a word to describe it. “How have you been sleeping?”

“Not great,” Steve admitted. “Bucky’s been having insomnia and nightmares. I don’t want him to be alone in the middle of the night, so JARVIS wakes me if he’s awake for more than twenty minutes or so or if he shows signs of... of checking out. It’s okay, though, I don’t need that much.”

“You need more than you’re getting. Why don’t you go lie down for a nap?”

Steve looked down at Bucky. “But––”

“I’ll stay with him. Go take a nap, I’m getting tired just looking at you.”

“Okay,” Steve finally said. He eased himself carefully out and slipped a couch cushion in his place. Bucky didn’t stir––unusual for him, but he tended to sleep heavily after one of his dissociative episodes. “If he has a nightmare, don’t try to wake him up, just come get me. Sometimes he ends up in this kind of fugue state, and it’s––I don’t want you dealing with it by yourself. And if he wakes up––”

“He and I can be on our own for a couple of hours,” Sam said firmly. 

Steve nodded unsteadily. He went into his room, shut the door, and undressed down to his boxers. He lay down and pulled out his phone to set an alarm for two hours from now. 

Tony had texted him. _Talked to Pepper. I’ll be home in less than 48 hours._

Steve felt almost lightheaded with relief. _Thanks. Sam is making me take a nap._

_I don’t think I’ve ever seen you take a nap._

_It’s been a long week._

The three little dots appeared and disappeared a few times. Finally Tony said, _For me, too. You might’ve been right about jet lag when you’re getting over the flu. When I get back there is a long nap with our names on it. I’m looking forward to it._

Steve frowned. _Are you okay?_

_Yeah, just tired. Take your nap. I have to go to bed anyway._

_Sleep well. I love you._

_Love you too._

Steve put the phone on his bedside table and lay down properly. He didn’t think he’d actually be able to sleep, but he was exhausted. Neither he nor Bucky had been getting more than three or four hours a night since Tony had left, and it was rapidly catching up to both of them.

He woke to JARVIS saying his name quietly. “––tain Rogers. Captain Rogers, please wake up.”

“Yeah,” Steve said groggily. It felt like his eyelids weighed about a ton each. He must’ve been in the deepest part of his REM cycle to feel like this. “I’m up. What’s going on, JARVIS?”

“Sergeant Barnes is on the balcony.”

Steve came abruptly awake all at once. “The forcefield is still activated, isn’t it?”

“Yes, Captain.” JARVIS paused. “But I thought it best to alert you.”

“Yeah,” Steve said, forcing himself out of bed. “Thanks.”

He actually stumbled on his way out of the bedroom, almost knocking into the doorjamb. He steadied himself and took a deep breath.

Sam was asleep in the armchair with a book on his chest. Steve couldn’t help but feel a stab of annoyance toward him; he had trusted Sam to look after Bucky, just for a couple of hours, and Sam had fallen asleep. But he knew that this was wearing on all of them. Steve had spent the last week dealing with Bucky, but Sam had spent the last week dealing with _him_ , and Steve knew that couldn’t be easy. He probably hadn’t meant to fall asleep. 

The forcefield that prevented anyone from falling––or jumping––off of Stark Tower except from the landing pad on the roof didn’t serve as either a heater or a windbreak. It was bitterly cold and windy as Steve stepped out onto the balcony. Bucky didn’t look like he was feeling either as he stood at the railing with his arms crossed, staring down at the ground. 

“Hey, Buck,” Steve said. “Everything okay?”

Bucky didn’t turn to look at him. “JARVIS woke you.”

“Yep.”

“I told him not to.”

“Well, I’m glad he did.” Steve leaned against the doorjamb. Bucky didn’t take well to being crowded in this sort of mood. “I’m sorry you woke up on your own.”

Bucky shrugged. “Not your fault.”

Steve let a few seconds of silence go by. Then he asked, “Anything in particular you looking at?”

Bucky didn’t answer for awhile. Finally he said, “I thought about it that first night. Thought about ending it.”

Steve’s heart leapt into his throat. “Jesus, Bucky, don’t––”

“I decided not to.”

“Thank God,” Steve said, heartfelt. 

“I decided it wouldn’t help. Your relationship with Tony wouldn’t survive it.”

“Bucky, I’m not sure _I_ would survive it,” Steve said softly. 

Bucky turned and looked at him. “You would. You don’t know how to surrender, Steve. You never did. But you and Tony––I didn’t see it working, after that. So I decided not to. But every day since, part of me has wished I had. It would be easier than this.”

Steve swallowed. “Tony’s coming home tomorrow. I finally told him how hard this has been on us, and he’s coming home, and we’re gonna––we’re gonna work it out, Bucky, I promise.”

Bucky shook his head. “You can’t promise me that, Steve. You can’t promise me that Tony will ever be okay with me, not really.”

“I think he can be,” Steve said, a little unsteadily. 

“Maybe.” Bucky raised his head and met Steve’s eyes. “But if he isn’t, I need you to let me go. We’ve both reached the end of our tethers, I can feel it. So whatever happens next––that’s it. Promise me.”

“I promise,” Steve said, even though it just about killed him. He didn’t say, _What about till the end of the line?_ He knew Bucky was right. “I promise, Bucky.”

Bucky sighed. “Thank you.”

He didn’t say anything else. After a few seconds, Steve ventured, “You want to come back inside? It’s freezing out here.”

“Hadn’t noticed,” Bucky said, but he followed Steve inside the apartment. 

Sam stirred in the chair as they came in. “What?” he mumbled, sitting up. “Oh fuck. Steve, I’m sorry.”

Steve waved it off. “It’s fine. We’ve been asking a lot of everyone recently. I think we’re just going to stay in the rest of today, though, if you want to get some rest.”

Sam looked dubious. “You’re sure?” 

“Yeah,” Steve said, glancing at Bucky. “I’ll let you know if we need anything.”

Sam nodded. He squeezed Steve’s shoulder as he passed by, giving him a weighted look. _Don’t be a fucking martyr_ , that look said. Steve hoped his answering smile was reassuring. 

Once Sam was gone, Steve asked JARVIS for a marathon of movies made before 1944––his choice, Steve didn’t want to have to think about it—and sat Bucky down on the sofa. He made hot chocolate for both of them before joining him there. Bucky relaxed a little once Steve was leaning against him, and the two of them ended up curled into each other, Steve’s head resting on Bucky’s shoulder, Bucky’s cheek resting on his head. He wasn’t sure that either of them were really watching the TV. Bucky didn’t say anything, but Steve could tell by the way his thumb swept back and forth across the inside of Steve’s wrist that he was still with him. 

Maybe saying what he’d said to Steve out on the balcony had been the key. Maybe holding that in had been making Bucky sick all week. He hadn’t wanted to say it to Steve; more than that, Steve hadn’t wanted to hear it. 

He had to believe that Tony would be able to forgive Bucky. This couldn’t be it. This couldn’t be the last time they ever held each other. But if it _was_ the last time, Steve thought, his throat tight with tears he absolutely refused to shed, it was going to be something they could both remember. Something they could both hold on to. 

After the third movie ended, JARVIS asked, “Shall I begin another?”

Steve started to say yes, but Bucky said, “No, thanks, J.” He looked down at Steve and brought his hand up, caressing Steve’s cheek slowly. “Steve.”

They hadn’t had sex since Tony left. Since a while before then. “Buck. Really?”

Buck let his hand fall to his lap. “You don’t want to? Even if it’s...”

“Don’t say it,” Steve said, and now he really did sound like he was going to cry. “It’s not—this isn’t happening. Tony wants to try.”

“Tony wants to try because he’s not a total asshole and he can hear how you’re hurting,” Bucky said wearily.

“Buck—”

“I want this,” Bucky said abruptly. “I want this, Steve. Please.”

It was the first real preference Steve had heard Bucky express in days. Steve nodded jerkily. 

Bucky breathed out. “Thank you.”

It was... not easy. Steve was distracted, and Bucky was more determined than he was turned on. Prep took forever because Bucky’s body just didn’t want to give, and several times Steve thought about stopping the whole thing. It was objectively the worst sex he’d ever had, and he never thought he’d characterize any sex he had with either of his partners as bad. 

“Facing you,” Bucky said, when Steve tried to roll him into his hands and knees. “Facing you,” he repeated insistently when Steve hesitated, mostly because he was pretty sure he was going to cry. 

“Okay,” Steve said, lining himself up. “Okay.” He pushed in slowly, feeling Bucky’s body take him in the way it hadn’t wanted to take his fingers. Hot, tight, wet with lube. Felt like home. Steve buried his face in Bucky’s neck. 

“C’mon, babe, you gotta move,” Bucky said, his fingers tangling in Steve’s hair. “Can’t stay here forever.”

Steve wished he could. Bucky didn’t have a lot of leverage but he used what he did have to try and push himself down on Steve’s dick. Steve let out a strangled moan and his hips snapped forward without any input from him.

“There we go,” Bucky said, a smirk in his voice, if not on his face. “Come on, Steve. Fuck me.”

Steve put his head down and put his all into it. This wasn’t the last time, he told himself. They had plenty of times ahead of them. This wasn’t the way he and Bucky ended. It just _wasn’t_.

Steve wanted it to go on forever. He got them both to the brink three times, only to pull back—to pull _out_ the second time—and change positions, rolling Bucky onto his side or sitting up against the headboard so Bucky could ride him. The third time, Bucky cursed him a blue streak. They were both soaked with sweat, and the room reeked of sex, of the two of them. Bucky was practically growling at him as Steve flipped him onto his back, maneuvering them back into the position they started in. He slid home easily, and Bucky clawed at his back.

“Please,” Bucky gasped. 

“Okay,” Steve said, too far gone to think about stopping them a fourth time. “Okay.”

Orgasm was like a wall of water crashing over him. He saw it coming, but it was so much more sudden and so much more powerful than he’d expected. 

“Oh God,” he heard Bucky say, from a long way off. Steve forced his eyes open so he could watch. Bucky’s eyes were wide, but Steve wasn’t sure he was seeing anything. “Steve. _Steve_.”

“Bucky,” Steve managed, and then he was gone, washed away. It put him _down_ , took his feet out from under him, made him unsure which way was up. 

He came to draped over Bucky. Still inside him, though he slipped out when he moved, causing them both to groan. There was sweat and slick everywhere. The bed was ruined. 

“That was either the best or worst thing that’s ever happened to me,” Bucky said groggily. “Wait, no, definitely not the worst. But I can’t decide if I liked it.”

Steve understood what he meant. He’d been having great sex with Tony and Bucky for months now, but he’d never felt quite so... wrecked. 

“I liked it,” Steve murmured. 

“Yeah,” Bucky said decisively, turning over and curling into him, heedless of the mess. “I did, too. Love you, Steve.”

“Love you, Buck,” Steve murmured, so full of affection for him there wasn’t room left for anything else. Not sadness, not fear, nothing.

They both slept the whole night through. Bucky was still sleeping when Steve got up for his run. He left a note— _Be back by 8 with coffee and breakfast_ —and headed out on his usual route toward the park. It was a cold morning, everything covered in a light frost, only the second or third of the year, but Steve felt better than he had in months. 

He noticed the men about mile eight, halfway through his second loop through the park. Three of them, hoods pulled up and obscuring their faces. He cut through Strawberry Fields to see if he could lose them, and he did. He relaxed, thinking he might’ve been letting Bucky’s paranoia infect him. But when he picked up the path again, one of them was waiting for him. 

There were other people out jogging. Steve couldn’t have said why these guys made the hair on the back of his neck stand up. But they did. 

It was only when he saw another, identically dressed trio coming toward him that he realized he was trapped. Surrounded by seven men, which was bordering on too many, especially if they were armed and he wasn’t, and with clueless civilians to protect.

Except... there suddenly weren’t any civilians. There weren’t even any birds chirping. It was eerily silent, aside from a distant siren.

He slowed and then stopped. “All right. Is this a prank show? Did Tony put you up to this?”

Someone laughed. Steve turned and saw a familiar man in a suit approaching the group. “I promise you, Stark had nothing to do with this,” Secretary Ross said. “Not directly, anyway. I suppose that if he had seen fit to answer any of my emails over the past six months, we might have avoided this.”

“And what is ‘this’ exactly?” Steve asked, trying to look loose and relaxed, even though he knew now that all of the men were armed.

Ross smiled. “You’re under arrest, Captain Rogers.”

Steve lifted his chin, defiant. “For what?”

Ross’s smiled widened, turned sly and satisfied. “Oh, we’ll think of something. Boys?”

Steve had expected a gun. He hadn’t expected a cattle prod set to high. The first hit made him gasp; the second made his knees buckle; the third drove him to the ground. He was still trying to recover when one of them swooped in and covered his head with a black bag. There was a hissing sound and a noxious smell.

 _Shit. I’m going to be really late_ , Steve thought, just as his vision went black. 

***

Steve did not come back at eight. He didn’t come back at 8:05 or 8:10.

“JARVIS, can you track Steve’s comlink?” Bucky asked.

There was a pause. “I’m afraid I do not have a location on Captain Rogers. His comlink appears to be either turned off or not functioning.”

Bucky’s stomach turned to ice.

He took stairs three at a time to the common floor, where Sam, Clint, and Natasha were eating breakfast, and announced, “Something’s happened to Steve.”

A lot of commotion ensued. Arguing. Clint thought being less than fifteen minutes late with a dead comlink wasn’t enough to get worked up about.

Clint was an idiot, clearly. Bucky couldn’t believe he shared an apartment with someone that stupid, much less a dog.

Sam and Nat understood how serious it was. They overruled Clint and sketched out Steve’s jogging route. Sam said he’d do a flyover while Nat did the groundwork. She made Clint go with her.

None of them thought it was a good idea for Bucky to go. “Your murder eyes will scare the civilians, and then none of them will talk to us,” Clint told him. Bucky hadn’t been outside the tower in a week, and he hadn’t looked in a mirror in at least that long. Clint was stupid but Bucky suspected he was right about this. He sat on the sofa with its view of the park. 

He and Steve were going to have Words about the lack of variation in his jogging routine. Bucky should have done something about that a year ago. Stupid, soft civilian life. 

Chewy put his head in Bucky’s lap, and Bucky pet his ears. They were really soft. Bucky let them slip through his fingers and tried not to imagine what might be happening to Steve right then because he’d been dumb enough to wait ten minutes, thinking maybe there’d been a line at Gregory’s or Steve got caught talking to his favorite barista on her break. Maybe his comlink had just broken or gotten wet or he’d forgotten to turn it on.

The elevator doors opened. Bucky jerked around, hoping it was Steve. 

It was Tony. The two of them stared at each other. 

“Barnes,” Tony finally said. “Didn’t expect to find you up here all by yourself.”

Bucky swallowed. “Steve’s missing.”

Tony’s eyes widened. “What?”

“He went out for his jog earlier and didn’t come back. His comlink isn’t working, and JARVIS can’t track him. The others are out looking.”

“He’s––are you sure?”

Bucky stared at him incredulously. “Dead. Comlink. And it’s been an hour now.”

“Right, okay. Shit.” Tony swiped a hand over his face. “Jesus Christ, can’t we catch a fucking break? All right, first things first. JARVIS, what was Steve’s last known location?”

“Central Park, sir. The comlink stopped working eight miles into Captain Rogers’s usual jogging route.”

“Any chance we can do this the old fashioned way? Track his cell phone?”

There was a brief pause. “Captain Rogers’s cell phone has been stationary at 62nd and Park Avenue for the last half hour. I do not believe it is with him.”

“Yeah, they dumped it. Any audio or visual recordings that we can access remotely?”

“No, sir. But you have an email from Secretary Ross that might be of interest.”

Tony turned and met Bucky’s eyes. “What a coincidence. Project it, J.”

JARVIS projected the email on the blank wall of the kitchen. It wasn’t long. 

_You shouldn’t have ignored me, Mr. Stark. I had to get your attention somehow, and I would bet that I have it now. Are you ready to talk?_

Tony looked away from Bucky as he said, “Tell Ross I’ll be in DC by two o’clock. He can name the place. And get everyone home.”

“Yes, sir.”

“You’re going to try and negotiate with Ross?” Bucky demanded. “What does he want? Why would he take Steve?”

Tony sighed. He went over to the kitchen island and poured himself a cup of coffee. “There might be a few things I’ve been keeping to myself. I didn’t want anyone to worry. Thought I had it under control.”

“Famous last words,” Bucky muttered. 

“We’ll handle it,” Tony said, frowning. “We’ll get Steve back. But I need to know where your head is at. Do we need to leave you home? Because you’re looking a little crazy round the eyes right now, and Steve said you weren’t doing so hot.”

Bucky swallowed. “You can’t leave me home for this. Please. No matter what happened between us—”

“This is not about that,” Tony replied swiftly. “I need to know whether you’re about to lose it, Barnes. So, cards on the table. Both of us. I’ll go first.”

Bucky looked at him sharply. “You want to do this now? We’ve got about five minutes before the others—”

“I miss you,” Tony said bluntly. Bucky went silent, startled. “I miss you, and I want things to be the way they were, but I’m afraid it won’t work and trying will make it worse and you and Steve will both leave and I’ll spiral into the bad place and end up the same bitter husk of a man my father was by the time he died.”

“Jesus,” Bucky said. 

Tony shrugged. “You said we’re short on time. I decided to be efficient.”

“Right. Um.” Bucky tried to gather his thoughts, but it felt like they slipped away like sand beneath his feet. He felt his heart start speeding up, and then there was the pressure of a small, furry body leaning against his knees. Bucky reached down and buried his fingers in Chewy’s fur. That grounded him enough for him to find his words. 

“I miss you, too. It’s killing me how much I miss you. Staying here hasn’t been good for me, but I didn’t want to leave. I’m afraid, too. Sometimes I think we’d all be better off if I—if I wasn’t here anymore. One way or another.”

Tony was staring at him now. “So we both miss each other, we’re both afraid, and we’re both fucked in the head. Great. Great place to start.”

“ _Tony_ ,” Bucky said, feeling a sense of exasperation so familiar it made him want to cry. 

“It’s going to be Nat’s op,” Tony said abruptly. “She gets to decide if she wants you or not. If not, you’ll come to DC with me. Actually.” Tony paused, eyeing Bucky thoughtfully. “No. I’ve just decided you’re coming with me. It’ll throw Ross off his game, seeing us together. He thought he could break us up, and he’s afraid you know too much—we show up together, as a united front, that’ll worry him.”

“Wait,” Bucky said. “The op isn’t in DC?”

“Nope,” Tony said, popping the ‘p.’

Tony wouldn’t explain anything more until the others got back. He threw back another cup of coffee but ignored the food that was out on the counter. He looked tired, Bucky thought, trying not to watch him too openly. He wondered how many hours Tony had been awake, and how many more would pass before he could rest. He wouldn’t stop until Steve was home safe, that much Bucky was certain of. 

The others returned before Bucky could put his foot in it by asking Tony if he was all right. 

“Tony?” Sam said, following Nat and Clint in. “JARVIS said you knew where—“

“Thaddeus Ross has Steve,” Tony said. “When we didn’t respond to the video, he must have moved on to the next plan, and this is it. I don’t know exactly what he wants, but I can guess. And I know where he’s probably taken him, because there’s really only one prison that could hold him.”

Clint blinked. “Where?”

“The Raft.” Tony flicked his hand and a floating 3D schematic appeared in midair. “It makes Riker’s look like a bouncy castle. It’s built to house enhanced individuals. Ross got the funding for it through back channels so the public wouldn’t know.”

“How do you know all of this?” Nat asked, crossing her arms over her chest. 

“I have sources,” Tony said shortly. 

“You said you can guess what Ross wants,” Sam said. “What is it?”

“Exactly what you and Steve thought when he tried to fuck us up by sending me the tape of my parents’ murder: control of the Avengers. But he can’t call for it outright.”

“Why not?” Clint asked. 

Tony smiled bitterly. “Approval ratings, believe it or not. About seventy percent of the population approves of the Avengers and the job we’re doing. But since the battle at the Triskelion, government’s been struggling a little in that area. It shatters trust when it turns out your shadowiest agency was secretly a Nazi organization out to murder large swathes of the population. Right now only about twenty-two percent of the population thinks the government is working in their best interest. So he can’t take us on directly.”

“You’ve clearly been thinking about this for a while,” Nat said. “Any reason you didn’t share with the class?”

Tony actually looked kind of sheepish. “I should have. I didn’t expect him to escalate things quite like this.”

“We’ll talk about that later,” Bucky said. “How do we get Steve back and get Ross off our backs?”

“Yeah, I have a plan for that,” Tony said. “Bucky and I are going to DC. We’ll deal with Ross.”

Clint’s eyebrows shot up. “Together?”

Tony looked at Bucky. Bucky nodded. “Together,” Tony confirmed. “The three of you and—JARVIS, where the hell is Bruce?”

“Still sleeping, sir,” JARVIS said. “He had a late night in the lab and no one had yet instructed me to wake him.”

“Well, tell him it’s time to rise and shine. He’s not going along for the jailbreak, but he’ll be working things from this end. The plans for the Raft were based on old SHIELD technology.” Tony paused and widened the schematics so they spread out all around them. “Which was based on proprietary Stark tech.”

Sam’s eyes widened. “Please tell me—“

“Oh yeah.” Tony flashed a smile. Bucky didn’t trust its sincerity for a moment, but it still did something to his insides. “I was suspicious of the government way before it was sexy. I always leave myself a backdoor. So the three of you go in, Bruce opens the door for you from here, you get Steve out and you come home.”

Clint, Nat, and Sam all exchanged a glance. “That sounds doable,” Nat finally said. “What kind of bargain are you planning to strike with Ross?”

“One that results in no one being unjustly imprisoned, and which lets us do our jobs,” Tony said, somewhat grimly. “He doesn’t have a lot of leverage if he doesn’t have Steve, and we can always go public and say that the Secretary of State threatened us. It wouldn’t end well for him, but we’d piss off a lot of other really powerful people in the process. I want to put a stop to this permanently if I can.”

“How?” Sam asked, sounding suspicious. 

Tony took a deep breath. “I think we are going to have to agree to some sort of oversight.”

“Like hell we are,” Clint snapped. 

Tony shook his head. “Listen to me. This has been coming ever since SHIELD fell. I’ve thought it through––I hoped I’d have more time, but this is happening now. We might do better to try and work with the UN, rather than Congress––the bureaucratic dysfunction is pretty bad in both cases, but we operate internationally enough that the UN makes the most sense. They’ll want a liaison of some kind. But I’m going to reserve our right to pick and choose our missions, and I’m going to tell Ross he needs to sink the Raft.”

“I bet he’ll love that,” Nat muttered. 

“He’ll say that there needs to be accountability. And he’s probably right about that. But the Raft isn’t accountability, it’s a black site. It’s Guantanamo Bay. And it’s not acceptable.” Tony paused and looked around. Bucky did, too, and saw that Clint’s jaw was set mulishly, and Nat’s arms were folded over her chest. Sam was frowning. Bucky couldn’t say how he himself felt about the idea, except that he was in favor of anything that got Steve back and didn’t result in him being taken again. 

“Look,” Tony said, “none of this is going to happen today. I will give Ross just enough for him to know that we’re willing to deal––through proper channels, and without him fucking _kidnapping_ any of us. Timing is going to be key, though. I want him to get the news that we’ve broken Steve out at the right moment, so that he realizes all his leverage is gone.”

“You’re supposed to be in DC at two o’clock,” Bucky said. “That doesn’t give the others much time to get to the Raft.”

“The Raft isn’t far,” Tony said. “By the time we get to DC, you guys should almost be inside.” He paused. “Well?”

Nat looked at Clint. Clint nodded. She looked at Sam, who also nodded. She looked back at Tony. “Tell us what we need to know.” 

Bucky tuned them out. He itched a little at not being able to go with them; he wanted to see Steve as soon as possible. But he also recognized the truth in what Tony was saying about shaking Ross up. Not to mention, he was well aware that he was not at his best right now. Putting him in a position to receive and dole out violence was probably... not a good idea. Steve wouldn’t have thought so, anyway. 

While the others were planning, Bucky went and sat on the floor near Chewy and did some of the breathing exercises Sam had taught him. The 4-7-8 one worked pretty well, most of the time. Not as well when he couldn’t stop imagining what might be happening to Steve right at that very moment. 

Tactically, it didn’t make sense for them to beat him or hurt him, Bucky thought. But he knew what a little shit Steve could be, and he didn’t put it past him to be an idiot. In fact, being an idiot had been his area of expertise since about 1920. And goons didn’t always think about what was tactically sound. Sometimes they just wanted to shut a smart-mouthed pain-in-the-ass up.

“Hey, Barnes,” Tony said. 

Bucky looked up. The others had left, aside from Bruce, who was drinking coffee and studying something on a tablet. 

“Shower and suit up,” Tony said. “As many weapons as you want. And make some of ‘em findable. You’re going as my protection.”

Bucky unfolded himself to his feet. “When do we go?”

“Wheels up in twenty minutes. Well,” Tony pulled a face, “I say wheels, nothing we have is so pedestrian that it has _wheels_. We’re taking the smaller Quinjet.” 

“Right.” Bucky glanced toward Bruce, and then back toward Tony. “You okay to fly?”

“JARVIS will do most of it,” Tony said, waving a hand. “He’s the best autopilot money can’t buy. Aren’t you, J?”

“I assure you, Sergeant Barnes, my safety record is considerably better than that of any human pilot.”

“I know, J, didn’t mean to imply otherwise.” He was more concerned that Tony be sharp once they were down there. But he looked okay now, Bucky thought. And even if he hadn’t, there wasn’t much choice. 

He took a very short shower, pulled his hair back, and put on his favorite tac suit, the one that allowed him to hide the most weapons. He didn’t shave completely, leaving just enough scruff to look a bit rough, and added a pair of sunglasses. “I look like a cartoon, JARVIS,” he said as he took the stairs back up to the common area. 

“Sir appreciates a certain classic style,” JARVIS replied, judiciously. Bucky snorted. 

Tony did, indeed, look both appreciative and approving when he looked Bucky over. He gave Bruce some last minute instructions, and Bucky told Chewy to sit, since he was looking like he was going to try and follow them out. The two of them climbed into the Quinjet, and Tony ran through some pre-flight checks with JARVIS. Then they were off, rising into the air, watching the tower fall away beneath them. 

“When was the last time you left the tower?” Tony asked. 

Bucky tore his gaze away from the window and looked at Tony. “Not sure. Before you went to Japan.”

Tony looked unsurprised. “You sure you’re up to this?”

“Are you?” Bucky returned. 

“I have to be.”

“So do I.”

Tony made a noise of disagreement, but he didn’t argue. “Your role in this is limited. I want you to lurk menacingly and glare at Ross. Otherwise, leave it to me. I know him. I know what he wants.”

Bucky was silent for a moment, thinking. “You think you know what he wants,” he finally said. “But you can’t know for sure. And I know that when he sent you the video, you thought that part of what he wanted was _me_. Because I scare him.”

“That’s true. I think he thinks you remember more than you do about your time as the Soldier, working for Hydra within SHIELD.” Tony glanced at Bucky, “What are you driving at?”

Bucky swallowed. “It might not be control that he’s after. He might be after me. What if what he wants is me for Steve?”

“Not necessary, the others are taking care of it.”

“Me for a truce, then. To leave you all alone.”

“Not happening.”

Bucky shrugged. “Wouldn’t be a bad deal from your perspective.”

“Yeah, Barnes, it would be. Do you think Steve would ever forgive me if I did that?”

“Steve wouldn’t have to know.”

“ _I_ would know. Jesus. Do you really—no,” Tony said, interrupting himself. “No, it’s not that you think that little of me. It’s that you think that little of yourself.”

“It’d probably be better than Hydra,” Bucky said reflectively, staring out the front of the plane. They were following the coastline down, just passing over the boardwalk at Coney Island, shut down now in the offseason. “Might even be kind of restful.” A quiet cell in a floating prison—it didn’t sound so bad, really.

“You think they won’t use you?” Tony said. “You think Ross is just going to let you rot? I don’t think so. Even if he promises otherwise, eventually there’ll be an end that justifies the means—your means. No, it’s a nonstarter, and even if it wasn’t, any plan that ends with any of us in prison indefinitely is a really bad plan.”

“It—“

“No. Shut your mouth right now, Bucky. Stop trying to make a totally unnecessary sacrifice play just to get out of having to have the hard conversation you know the three of us need to have. It might be easier, but it wouldn’t be better, and you know Steve would never sleep—and neither would I.”

Bucky didn’t know what to say. Finally he said the only thing he could think: “I killed your parents.”

There was a long, long silence. Bucky glanced over and saw that Tony’s jaw was set, and there was a muscle twitching in the corner of it. “Hydra killed my parents,” he finally said. “They used your body to do it. You weren’t at home when it happened.”

Bucky looked down at his hands and said nothing.

“I know that’s true,” Tony went on after a few seconds. “I’m even starting to believe it. But I don’t know how much energy I have to keep you from self-destructing if that’s what you’re determined to do, because I’m pretty tired and Ross is a wiley son of a bitch. So do it if you have to, but don’t think you’re doing me any favors.” Tony paused. “And if you could avoid fucking up the plan, that’d be great.”

It took Bucky a few minutes to say anything at all. “Okay,” he finally said. 

“Okay?” Tony replied. 

“Okay,” Bucky repeated. 

“Well––good,” Tony said. “Good.”

They both fell silent. Bucky glanced over and saw that Tony’s head was tipped back and his eyes were closed. “You want some music?” Bucky asked quietly.

“Sure,” Tony said. And then, after a few seconds, “No Italian opera.”

Bucky blinked. “Okay. JARVIS? You know what we both like. Anything will do.”

JARVIS chose Chopin. Bucky stared out the window as the Quinjet swept out over the coastline, and thought about Steve. 

_We’re coming, pal. Just hang on._

***

Tony was furious.

He was also exhausted, and his head was throbbing, and he was worried that Bucky was not up to any of this, but the slow burn of his fury let him put all of that aside as he marched into Thaddeus Ross’s office. Bucky held the door open for him and glared at all comers.

They were ten minutes late. Ross made them cool their heels in the waiting room for another five. All of it burned time, which was Tony’s plan. The others would be preparing to break into the Raft; once they were in, he hoped it would be no more than twenty minutes before Ross was informed that Steve was no longer in his custody. 

His phone buzzed. _Success, sir_ , JARVIS had texted him. 

They were in. Tony took a deep breath and nodded at Bucky, whose eyelid barely shivered in the faintest hint of a wink. 

“Mr. Stark, the secretary will see you now.” 

Tony dredged up a polite smile for the young woman behind the desk. Bucky started to follow him in, and she said, “Your bodyguard must remain out here.”

“My bodyguard goes where I go,” Tony replied. “I’m sure you understand.” This was only partly a power play. Bucky had had to surrender his most obvious weapons at security, but Tony was sure that he had a number of others concealed on his person. Tony himself was wearing the bracelets, but he had to admit that he felt less vulnerable with Bucky at his back. 

Tony sailed past her desk without waiting for a reply. He heard her make a startled noise, which he assumed meant Bucky had smiled at her. 

“Stark,” Ross greeted him as he entered. Tony didn’t think he was imagining the double-take Ross did upon seeing Bucky. “Good of you to finally come and see me. Sergeant Barnes, a pleasure. Sit, please.”

Tony sat. Bucky didn’t. He stood at Tony’s shoulder and loomed beautifully, just as Tony had told him to. “Secretary Ross,” Tony said evenly. “Your email was quite compelling.”

Ross smiled. “I’m sure it was. You understand, I had no desire to go to such great lengths. Had you responded appropriately, in a timely manner, we could have avoided all these... histrionics. But now, here we are. I assure you that Captain Rogers is completely safe.”

“He had better be,” Bucky said in a low voice that was almost but not quite a growl. 

Ross’s gaze lingered on Bucky—uneasily, if Tony wasn’t mistake. “I will be quite happy to release him––on good behavior, of course.”

“Good behavior implies that there was bad behavior,” Tony observed. “What are you charging him with?”

Ross folded his arms over his chest. “I think you’ll find that if you go back through the Avengers’ record, there are about five hundred possible counts of public endangerment, and that’s just for starters.”

“What’s to stop us going public?” Tony said. “People like Steve a lot more than they like you, Secretary. They trust him a lot more, too. Your word against his.”

“It won’t be his word, though, it’ll be yours,” Ross said. “Which is significantly less trustworthy. Plus, if you were to go to the press, Captain Rogers would find his level of comfort sadly reduced.”

Tony’s smile twisted. “Right. So, tell me, Secretary. What do you want?”

Ross leaned forward. “I want the Avengers to answer to the U.S. government. I want oversight of your missions. I want you back in the chain of command.”

“Under your thumb? I don’t think so.” Tony shot his cuffs, shaking his head. “We are willing to talk about oversight, but not by you personally. And we’d prefer to answer to the United Nations, given how often we operate overseas.”

“The Avengers belong to SHIELD––”

“Belonged to SHIELD,” Tony corrected. “Which turned out to be Hydra. Are you really going to claim a Nazi organization as a federal agency?”

Ross gritted his teeth. “Stark––”

“I have just told you that we are willing to talk. You may not like everything we have to say, but I’m sure we can come to some agreement.”

“This isn’t a negotiation.”

“Actually, that’s exactly what this is.” Tony leaned forward. “You took a hostage, Secretary. You took Steve goddamn Rogers _hostage_. If he were here, he’d tell me not to negotiate with you at all. He’d tell me to go to the press and tell everyone exactly what happened, because Steve Rogers has ironclad moral principles, and he’s not afraid of discomfort or even pain, for that matter. Now, I’m not as cavalier with his safety as he is himself, so I’m willing to negotiate. But I recommend that you avoid trying my patience. So tell me, in very plain language, what you want, and I will tell you if there is any part of it we are willing to give.”

Ross leaned back in his chair. In what was surely an involuntary twitch, he glanced up at Bucky. “The Avengers are operating outside the law. That isn’t acceptable any longer.”

Tony nodded. “I agree.”

Ross blinked. “What?”

Tony shrugged. “It was never Nick Fury or Phil Coulson’s intention that we be vigilantes, and that is essentially what we became when SHIELD fell. Believe it or not, I’m in favor of oversight. If we do it right, it will protect the Avengers just as much as it will hold them accountable.”

Whatever Ross had thought Tony would say, it clearly was not that. “You agree, then, that something must be done immediately.”

“I agree with the general thesis,” Tony said. “I have serious reservations about your practical applications so far. The Avengers are an elite strike force. We are not your tool. We must preserve some level of autonomy in order to be effective, and we want a handler we can trust––so, it goes without saying, not you. And we do not surrender our rights as citizens. No suspension of due process or _habeas corpus_ , no cruel and unusual punishment. Beyond that, I think there is going to be some serious legal wrangling, but I have lawyers who live for that sort of thing.” Tony smiled. “I’m sure you’ll enjoy getting to know them.”

Ross shook his head. “I think you’re overplaying your hand, Stark. I hold the trump card. I hold Rogers.”

“Letting him go is pretty much step one of any plan that involves us cooperating.”

Ross laughed. “You know, I’ve never understood why everyone said you were funny. But that, that was funny. No, Rogers will stay in my custody as insurance until this is all worked out to my liking. Unless...” He glanced up at Bucky. “Would you like to make a trade?”

“No,” Tony said swiftly. “Not an option.”

“Are you certain? It can’t be comfortable for you, having to live with Sergeant Barnes, knowing what he did.”

Tony felt his hackles rise. So they were going to do this, with Bucky in the room, even. As though he was a thing––or an animal that didn’t understand what was being said about it. He tried to control his face, but judging by the startled look on Ross’s, he didn’t think he succeeded. He did manage not to actually snarl at him. “So it _was_ you who sent the video. We suspected as much, but the evidence was circumstantial.”

Ross opened one hand in affirmation. “It seemed like information you should have.”

“It was a stupid move,” Tony said quietly. “Think what it could have done if you’d shown it to me right now. As it is, I’ve had months to get over it. You were impatient. You took it personally when I ignored you, and your anger made you careless. You underestimated all of us, and now you’re left with nothing.”

Ross’s eyes had hardened as Tony spoke. “I have Rogers.”

Tony said nothing, holding Ross’s gaze. Against his wrist, his watch pulsed three times––one short, two long. 

Mission success. The others had Steve. They were out. 

Perfect fucking timing. God bless Natasha Romanoff. 

Tony smiled. “You’ll be receiving a phone call in a minute or two. Steve Rogers is no longer in your custody. And you had best hope that your goons have not harmed a single hair on his very pretty head, because if they have, Sergeant Barnes and I will both be angry.”

Ross’s jaw dropped open. “How the hell did you––”

“I’m Tony fucking Stark, that’s how.” Tony stood up, planted his hands on the edge of Ross’s desk, and leaned over, locking gazes with Ross. “Did you forget that? You want to think twice about pushing me too far, Ross. I built the first Iron Man suit in a cave in Afghanistan with my bare hands, scrap metal, and a car battery attached to my heart, because someone pushed me too far. You thought you could build the Raft and I wouldn’t know? You thought you could take Steve Rogers somewhere I couldn’t find him?” 

The phone on Ross’s desk rang. “You’ll want to get that,” Tony said softly. “That’ll be your boys on the Raft, telling you he’s gone.”

Ross glared at him as he picked up the phone. “Ross.” He listened, scowl deepening. “Yes. Yes. Understood.” He hung up. 

The two of them stared at each other. Tony sat down slowly. Behind him, Bucky’s phone buzzed. “Is he hurt?” Tony asked shortly. 

“Three cracked ribs and a concussion,” Bucky reported. Tony could hear the barely-controlled rage in his voice. “Some second-degree electrical burns. And they drugged him.”

Tony controlled his expression carefully as he looked at Ross. Ross made an attempt at a nonchalant shrug, but Tony knew he knew he had lost command of the situation. “He must have resisted arrest,” Ross said. “Captain Rogers has always been impulsive.”

Tony gave him a very bitter smile. “People do tend to resist when they’re being unlawfully arrested. I warned you not to make me angry.”

“I’m shaking,” Ross replied, recovering some of his dry tone from earlier. “What do you want, Stark?”

Tony leaned forward. “My proposal, which I think is eminently reasonable under the circumstances, is this: my legal team, in collaboration with the Avengers, will draw up guidelines for oversight. The State Department will speak to the UN about establishing a committee––the UN Council on Enhanced Persons, something like that. Once it is handed over to the UN, I want you far, far away from any of the negotiations. If you continue to harass my team, or if you insist on being involved, I will go to the press with this entire conversation, which I have recorded, and tell them that you used my parents’ death to try and break apart Earth’s best defense, and when that didn’t work, you kidnapped Steve Rogers to try and blackmail me. How do you think that will go over with the public?”

Ross smirked. “I think you’ll find the signal dampeners in this room have kept you from recording anything.”

Tony actually did roll his eyes at that. Not very dignified, maybe, but for fuck’s sake. Some days it really did feel like he was surrounded by idiots. “And I think you'll find my equipment isn’t affected by any signal dampener currently on the market.”

Ross’s smile turned sharp and dangerous. “You’ll regret this, Stark.”

Tony shrugged. “Maybe. But I have a lot of regrets, and most of them I’ve learned to live with.” He stood up and buttoned his jacket. “If that’s all, Sergeant Barnes and I have somewhere else to be.”

“You realize he’s a killer, don’t you?” Ross said loudly, as Tony started to turn away. “He’s a murderer. He murdered your parents.”

Tony felt Bucky freeze beside him. He turned around to face Ross. “Hydra, concealed within SHIELD, murdered my parents. I am very interested to know who ordered the hit. Given the timing, it may very well have been someone within the U.S. government. How public would you like my inquiry to be? Piss me off right now, and it could be _very_ public.”

Ross glared. “Go to hell, Stark.”

Tony nodded. “Always a pleasure doing business with you, Secretary.”

“Until next time,” Ross said ominously. 

Tony rolled his eyes and walked out, Bucky at his back. 

They picked up Bucky’s other weapons at security, and emerged into the chilly DC afternoon. A wave of exhaustion crashed over Tony along with the cold air, and he found himself stumbling. Bucky caught him by the elbow. Tony’s first instinct was to shrug Bucky off. But he honestly wasn’t sure that his legs would support him, and he was shocked to realize that it wasn’t as hard as he thought it’d be to let Bucky help him the extra few steps to the car that awaited them. 

The driver dropped them at the helipad where they’d left the Quinjet. Bucky put him in the co-pilot’s seat, and Tony couldn’t even muster the energy to argue with him. He leaned back while Bucky ran through the pre-flight checks with JARVIS’s help, and then they were in the air, leaving behind the capital. Tony felt himself break out in a cold sweat with the sudden dissipation of tension. 

“JARVIS, call Natasha,” he said, letting his head loll against the headrest. 

Bucky glanced at him. “Tony? Are you okay?”

“Yeah, just... tired. I’ve been up for... awhile now.” Not that long, by his standards––maybe thirty-six hours? Possibly closer to forty. It was hard to tell with the time change, and Tony had been tired before then. He’d zoned out on the ride down to DC, but it hadn’t been an actual nap. He wanted desperately to sleep, but he couldn’t rest until he saw Steve with his own two eyes. 

“We have him and we’re heading back,” Nat said through his comlink. “How’d you two do?”

“About as well as expected,” Tony said. “Your timing was impeccable.”

“I do try,” she said. “I’d offer to let you speak to Steve, but he’s currently vomiting. Whatever they gave him to keep him docile seems to disagree with him. And it might be impeding his healing factor. I’ve called ahead to Bruce, and he has Helen on the line. We’ll meet you in medical when we get back.”

“Tell Bruce he needs to take a look at Tony, too,” Bucky said. “He looks like he’s about to fall over.”

“I’m jet lagged,” Tony objected. 

“You’re running a low grade fever, according to JARVIS.”

Tony’s mouth dropped open. When the hell had JARVIS told Bucky that? “Traitor.” 

“My apologies, sir,” JARVIS said, not sounding sorry in the slightest. 

“How are you doing, Barnes?” Natasha asked. 

“Better than I have been in months.”

“Good to hear it. Fly safe, we’ll see you at the tower.” Natasha disconnected. 

Tony looked at Bucky. “Is that true? Are you better than you have been in months?”

“Without a doubt,” Bucky said. “I needed that.”

“You needed to help me threaten the Secretary of State with a war of public opinion and possible bodily harm?” Tony asked, raising his eyebrows. 

“I needed to do something,” Bucky said. “I needed to feel like there was something I could do, instead of just waiting for my fate to be decided.” He fell silent, staring out the window. “I’d gotten used to having some... agency, I guess you could say, over my life. Until the video.”

“I’m sorry,” Tony said quietly. “I didn’t know how bad it’d gotten.”

“I know,” Bucky replied. “It’s not your fault.”

“It may not be my fault, but it’s in my power to fix it.” 

Bucky was quiet for a few seconds. “You don’t have to.”

“I want to,” Tony said. The words came out kind of slurred. He really was exhausted. “I miss you, remember? I remember saying that. I want _us_ again. Don’t you?”

“More than anything,” Bucky said softly. He cleared his throat. “But—”

“No,” Tony said. “Stop it.”

“But you said yourself—”

“Yeah, well, I’ve decided. I’m done being afraid. About this, anyway.” Tony forced his eyes open. “Maybe it’s the fever talking, or the leftover adrenaline—“ Bucky snorted “—but I’m tired of it all. And when that asshole looked at me, like he thought he could _break_ us—I thought—no, fuck that. We are too fucking strong, the three of us, together.”

Bucky didn’t say anything. Tony looked over and saw that there were tears slipping down his cheeks. He didn’t even seem aware of them, eyes fixed out the windshield. 

“Buck?” Tony murmured. Bucky drew a shuddering breath, but he still wouldn’t look at him. Tony swallowed, reached over, and put his hand on top of Bucky’s where it rested on the console.

Bucky gasped. He looked at Tony with something akin to fear in his eyes. No––not fear, Tony thought. Hope. Hope that was so tenuous it actually looked like pain. 

Tony put his hand on the back of Bucky’s neck, pulled him in, and kissed him. 

Bucky went very still. Then he grabbed Tony by his suit jacket and hauled him closer––as close as he could, considering they were in a goddamn Quinjet. Bucky kissed like he was trying to devour him, like he was trying to pour every minute of every hour that he had spent thinking Tony would never touch him again into the kiss. 

It was a lot to take in. Tony had started the kiss, but he felt like he was just along for the ride. And also like he might need to breathe at some point soon. 

Tony broke the kiss, but Bucky didn’t let him pull away. He leaned their foreheads together. Bucky was shaking, Tony realized. He might have been, too. 

“You okay?” Tony murmured. 

“Yeah,” Bucky mumbled back. “I really, really am. Are you?” 

“I’m... kind of lightheaded,” Tony realized. He was also sort of nauseous. “Uh, J? Have I eaten since Japan?”

“No, sir. You had coffee this morning at the tower.”

Bucky was staring at him in exasperation. “Tony, for God’s sake.”

“Shut up. I know you have a smushed up granola bar in your pocket. Gimme.”

Bucky dug a KIND bar out of the pocket of his tac suit and handed it to him. Tony didn’t love the idea of eating, but he knew he’d feel worse if he didn’t, so he forced himself to take a bite. Bucky produced a bottle of water from somewhere and handed it to him. “Thanks,” Tony said, taking a swig of it. 

Bucky didn’t say anything. After a moment, he reached over and put his hand on Tony’s knee. Tony leaned his head back against the headrest and smiled at him. 

Bucky looked close to tears. “I’ve missed this. Taking care of you. But I hope you realize you don’t have to––”

“Stop,” Tony said. “Buck. Seriously. Stop.”

“Yeah, okay.” Bucky took a deep breath. “I just can’t believe that you just... decided.”

“I didn’t _just_ decide,” Tony said. “It took me a while to get here. Months, actually. And God knows how long it’d’ve gone on if Steve hadn’t finally opened his mouth and told me how much damage I was causing.”

“It wasn’t like that. Don’t––you didn’t do it on purpose, stop blaming yourself. You needed time. And...” Bucky looked away. “I deserved it, anyway.”

“No,” Tony said quietly. “You didn’t. What I said to Ross back there was true. You didn’t deserve to be punished for this.”

Bucky didn’t look like he really believed that. But maybe he didn’t need to, Tony thought, as long as Steve and Tony did. And maybe, eventually, someday, he would.

“Sir,” JARVIS said, “pardon me for interrupting, but we are approaching the tower.”

“Got it.” Tony slid forward in his seat, taking the controls from JARVIS.

Nat was waiting for them in the Quinjet hangar. She had a black eye and she was favoring her left leg, Tony noticed. But she was also smiling. “Welcome back,” she said. 

“How is he?” Bucky asked before Tony had the chance. 

“Still drugged to the gills,” she said, leading them into the tower, “and still not healing as fast as he should be. Bruce and Helen are trying to figure out what they gave him. He keeps asking for both of you.”

“And the Raft?” Tony asked. 

“Sunk to the bottom of the ocean,” she said with an evil grin. “Most of the personnel got out, which I’m decidedly ambivalent about. And Ross?”

“We’re going to have to have a team meeting about Ross,” Tony said. “But without Steve––and without the Raft––he’s got way less leverage. I also recorded our meeting, and he wasn’t terribly discreet. But I’m hoping he won’t be our problem for much longer. Once the UN takes over, we’ll have a whole new set of problems.”

“Sounds like fun,” Natasha said as they got in the elevator. “I’ll have to dust off Natalie Rushman.”

It wasn’t a bad idea, actually. Tony had been assuming that he would handle most of the negotiations, possibly with some help from Pepper, but Natasha was patient, and people trusted her––God only knew why. The three of them might be a formidable negotiating team on this. 

“You do that,” he said, leaning casually against the wall. “Tell Pepper you want a new suit. Something expensive and scary.”

“You know it’s not her job to call the tailor anymore, right?”

Tony rolled his eyes. “I’m not a cretin. Pep loves buying clothes that are expensive and scary. She has an entire walk-in closet full of expensive, scary clothes. I break out in a cold sweat just being in there.”

“Are the two of you seriously bantering right now?” Bucky said. 

Tony turned to look at him. “Sarcasm and sheer force of will are pretty much all that’s keeping me upright right now, sweetheart. Well, and this wall here,” he added, patting it. “I love this wall.”

“Yeah, you do look like hell,” Natasha said. “And I thought you looked pretty bad this morning. You’ll let Bruce look at you?”

“I’ll let Bruce look at me,” Tony promised. 

The elevator arrived in medical, and Bucky barely waited for the doors to open before he squeezed through them and headed straight down the hall toward the patient rooms. Tony would’ve been right behind him, but he hadn’t been joking about staying upright by sheer force of will. It faltered a little as he pushed off the wall. Natasha had to grab his arm, and then she apparently felt like it was probably a good idea to keep hold of it. 

“You feel kind of warm,” she remarked as they made their way down the hallway. 

“That would be the fever I’m running, I guess.” 

She shot him an incredulous look, but they’d arrived at Steve’s room by then. Bucky was already inside, hovering at Steve’s bedside. Tony took two seconds to make sure he was steady on his feet and then let go of Natasha’s arm. 

“––kill you,” Bucky was saying as Tony came in. “Can’t believe you run the same goddamn jogging route every morning. It’s like you’ve learned _nothing_!”

“Buck,” Steve said weakly. 

“I should get JARVIS to program a randomized route into your phone every morning,” Bucky growled, and turned to Tony. “Can he do that?”

“Of course he can do that,” Tony said. “Or we could just microchip Steve. Hi Steve. You look like hell.” He did, too. Half his face was black and blue, and there was a line of butterfly stitches marching across his forehead. His pupils were blown wide, and his skin had a pasty, clammy look to it. 

“Tony,” Steve breathed, and attempted to reach for him with the hand that Bucky wasn’t holding. He broke off with a hiss of pain. 

“Hey, hey, it’s okay,” Tony said, circling the bed to stand on Steve’s other side. He took his hand. “I’m right here.” Natasha shoved a chair into the backs of his legs, and Tony sat. It brought him down more or less to Steve’s eye level. “How’re you doing?”

Steve closed his eyes. “Better now. They kept saying you were both okay...”

“Yeah,” Tony said, picking up Steve’s hand. He kissed his knuckles. “We’re okay. We just had to have ourselves a little chat with Thaddeus Ross, that’s all.”

“Asshole,” Steve muttered. 

“That’s for sure. I’ll tell you more about it when you’re feeling better. You look pretty rough.”

“I threw up,” Steve said, sounding vaguely amazed. “I haven’t thrown up since... 1944. Remember Coney Island, Buck?” he added, turning his head to look at Bucky. “Remember the Cyclone?”

“Unfortunately,” Bucky said. “Memory’s like swiss cheese, but I remember you throwing up Nathan’s hot dogs all over my shoes.”

“Sorry,” Steve said sheepishly, as though it hadn’t happened seventy years in the past. He sighed and squeezed Tony’s hand. “Awfully glad you two are home. My best fellas...”

He sounded like he was fading fast. Tony had to admit he felt like he might be, too. “Go to sleep. We’ll talk more when you wake up.” It said something about how out of it he was that he hadn’t remarked on Tony and Bucky being in the same room together for the first time in months. 

Steve’s hand went slack in his. Tony breathed a sigh of relief and laid his head on the edge of Steve’s mattress. Just for a second. He closed his eyes. 

“Tony,” someone said, shaking him. “Hey, Tony. If you open your eyes and stand up you can get into this bed and go back to sleep.”

“I’m okay here,” Tony mumbled. 

“Your back will thank me later.” Bruce––it was Bruce being evil and trying to wake him up––shook him again, and then actually hauled him right out of the chair. Tony mumbled a protest, but then there was a bed right there, at exactly the right height, and Bruce just kind of shoved him onto it. 

Someone removed his shoes, and Tony fumbled with his belt. Someone helped him get it off and he relaxed. He was definitely more comfortable with his belt and shoes off, on an actual bed. He rolled over, managed to open his eyes, and realized that someone had had the genius idea of putting him in a hospital bed, lowering one of the bars, and shoving it right up against Steve’s bed, essentially turning the two beds into a double. 

He thought he knew whose idea that had been. He looked around for Bucky, and found him on his other side, sorting out an armful of blankets. “Hey,” he said. 

“Hey,” Bucky said, stepping up with a quilt. He tucked it over Tony. “Are you comfortable? I can get you actual pajamas.”

“I’m okay,” Tony said, mostly because the idea of getting up long enough to put pajamas on was not appealing in the slightest. His arm was aching. He looked down at his arm and saw that there was an IV line into it. “When did that happen?”

“Bruce did that. Apparently you were pretty dehydrated. It’s mostly saline, with a side of painkillers.”

“Oh.”

Bucky’s hands twitched, like he started to reach for Tony and then stopped himself. “You should get some rest. Bruce said that if you’re sensible about it, you might avoid completely relapsing.”

“Yeah,” Tony said, yawning. He reached out and put his hand over Steve’s. Steve’s eyelashes fluttered and his fingers curled automatically around Tony’s, but he didn’t wake. “Are you staying?”

Bucky was quiet for a few seconds. “It’s up to you. I’d like to, just to be nearby in case one of you needs something, but not if having me here while you’re sleeping will make you uncomfortable.”

“No, that’s... it’s fine,” Tony said. “You should stay. I mean it,” he added, when Bucky hesitated. “You think I didn’t mean everything I said?”

“No, I just thought you might want to take it slow.”

“Slow’s okay,” Tony said, yawning around the words. “But having you sit here while Steve and I sleep is okay, too. So... are you staying?”

Bucky nodded. “Yes.”

“Good. Imma pass out now.” Tony closed his eyes. 

He was already half asleep, and he thought he might have dreamed it. But he was almost sure that he felt Bucky’s hand brushing over his forehead, pushing his hair back. 

***

Steve’s head was pounding, but he woke ready to fight or flee. He opened his eyes, gave a hiss of pain, and closed them again, even as he frantically tried to figure out where he was. It didn’t feel like the cell Ross’s goons had thrown him in, but they might have moved him. He had no idea how long he’d been out. 

“JARVIS, lights at ten percent,” he heard Bucky’s voice say, and his body relaxed, all at once. He remembered now, sort of, being rescued and brought back to the tower. He felt Bucky’s hand on top of his head, stroking his hair back. “Stevie? You awake?”

“Yeah,” Steve said, venturing to open his eyes again. His head still hurt, but it didn’t get any worse with his eyes open. “Hey.”

“Hey.” Bucky said softly. “How’re you feeling?”

“Not great,” Steve admitted. “But better.” The nausea was mostly gone, and his ribs didn’t ache as much, though that might have been the painkillers in his IV. He went to move his hand and realized that someone was holding it––Tony, he realized, glancing over. Tony was sound asleep in his own bed, which was pushed up against Steve’s, and he was holding Steve’s hand. He looked from Tony back to Bucky, almost speechless. 

Bucky shrugged. “I don’t know what to tell you. We did okay going to talk to Ross together. He says he misses me, and he’s tired of being too scared to try. He, um. He kissed me on the way back.”

“Oh,” Steve said faintly, not sure what to say. It was possible he was still asleep, he thought. Or maybe he was dead. Or dying, and this was what his mind had conjured up in his last seconds to comfort him. He didn’t know what to think. 

It was all too much, to be handed exactly what he wanted after months of thinking he would never have it again. All at once, without any warning, he started to cry. And not just cry but sob, wracking sobs that shook his entire body. “S––sorry,” he managed, but Bucky shook his head. 

“Don’t you fucking apologize for this, you punk,” Bucky said, and lowered the bar on the hospital bed so he could climb up with him. “After everything we’ve put you through.”

Steve shook his head. “No, no.”

“Yes, yes,” Bucky countered, wrapping himself around Steve. “It’s been a shitty few months, and it was capped off with a kidnapping, plus you have a concussion and you’re pumped full of painkillers and whatever shit Ross’s goons gave you, so cry all you want.”

“What Bucky said,” Tony said groggily. Steve looked down at him. He started to push himself up, but seemed to give up halfway through and just shifted over to rest his head against Steve’s hip. “Hi,” he mumbled. “Sorry if I fall asleep again. I’m really fucking tired.”

Steve tightened his grip on Tony’s hand. “I just,” he could barely speak. “I think I’d given up on this.”

“And you were so busy taking care of us that you weren’t taking care of yourself,” Bucky said. 

“Maybe,” Steve admitted. He leaned his head on Bucky’s shoulder and pulled in a hitching breath. Tony still had hold of his other hand. “Don’t leave,” he murmured, sniffling. 

“Not going anywhere, punk.”

“Me neither,” Tony said, voice heavy with exhaustion. Steve opened his eyes to look down at him worriedly. He extracted his hand from Tony’s to stroke his hair, and Tony sighed, pressing his face into Steve’s leg. “But is there any chance we could get out of here and into a real bed? I know the legs are locked on this thing, but it’s not real comfortable.”

“JARVIS?” Bucky asked. 

“Dr. Banner is on his way. It is good to see you awake and lucid, Captain.”

If Bruce was surprised to find all three of them more or less in the same bed, he didn’t show it. Nor did he remark upon Steve’s tear-streaked face, though Steve knew he definitely noticed it. He did make Bucky get down so he could examine Steve. “All right, your ribs finally seem to be healing,” Bruce said. “How’s the head?”

“It hurts,” Steve said. 

“It might for a couple more days, it was a pretty severe concussion. Any nausea?”

Steve shook his head. “But the light really hurt when I first woke up.”

Bruce nodded. “No screens until the light sensitivity goes away. At this point, we’ve mostly flushed the drug they gave you out of your system, so your healing should accelerate back to its normal level, but it might take a little longer than usual. I’m clearing you to leave medical. You, too,” Bruce added to Tony, “since you somehow avoided a full-on relapse of the flu. But you need to stay hydrated and get enough sleep for at least a week. No time zone changes. Agreed?”

“Agreed,” Tony said. “I feel like I could spend most of that week asleep and be perfectly happy.”

“Not a bad idea,” Bruce said, and then turned his attention to Bucky. “How are you feeling? Any dissociative episodes in the last twenty-four hours?”

Bucky shook his head. 

“I want you to see Sam at some point today,” Bruce said. Bucky opened his mouth to object, and Bruce shook his head, holding his hand up. “It seems like a lot has changed, but you can’t assume that you’re going to get better overnight. You need to look after yourself just as much as Tony and Steve do. So check in with Sam, please.”

“Fine,” Bucky said. “I’ll check in with Sam as soon as these two are settled.”

Bruce nodded. “I’ll send a nurse in to help. And...” He paused, surveying all three of them. “On behalf of the rest of the team, I would just like to say: congratulations and _thank God_.” With that, he turned and left. 

The three of them looked at each other. “I think we may have been hard to live with these last few months,” Steve said. Bucky snorted. 

“Speak for yourself. I’m a gem to live with at all times,” Tony replied with a pout. 

“Yeah, Tony, ‘gem’ is definitely the word I would use to describe you,” Steve said dryly. “Especially recently.”

Tony grimaced. “I know I’ve been... difficult.”

“I think Bruce’s point was that we’ve all been difficult, in our own ways,” Steve said. “I owe Sam and Nat a lot.”

“I know what you mean. I owe Bruce,” Tony said.

“I owe Nat, too,” Bucky said. “And Clint, I guess, though don’t tell him I said that. And JARVIS.”

Steve blinked. Even Tony looked puzzled. “JARVIS?” Tony repeated. 

Bucky shrugged. “He never judges me.”

Tony’s eyebrows shot up. “That must be nice for you. He sure judges the shit out of me.” This last was said with a glare at the ceiling, even though Tony had mocked Steve on more than one occasion for looking at the ceiling when he spoke to JARVIS.

A nurse came in then and helped Steve transfer into a wheelchair. Tony insisted on walking, and since he’d never officially been checked into medical as a patient, the nurse didn’t stop him. 

It was the first time in months that all three of them took the elevator together up to the penthouse. The nurse helped Steve into bed, gave them a written list of instructions–– _NO SCREENS_ was written across the top––and then left after wringing a promise from them that they’d call if necessary. Tony changed into pajamas and crawled in the other side of the bed, and Bucky went into the kitchen to make tea. 

Silence reigned for a few seconds. “I feel like I missed a lot,” Steve finally ventured. 

Tony sighed. “I was already two-thirds of the way there, I think. And then––well, having a common goal and a common enemy helped.”

“Clearly,” Steve said. He had so many other things he wanted to ask; it seemed too good to be true after so much misery, and past experience told him that it probably was. But Tony looked calm, if still really tired, and Steve decided he should probably trust Tony’s judgment. 

“We should talk about Ross at some point,” Tony said reluctantly. 

“Can it be later?” Steve asked, a little plaintively. “My head is killing me.”

“Yeah, of course,” Tony said, and patted his lap. “Come here. Lie down. I’ll see what I can do for your headache.”

By the time Bucky returned, Steve was half-asleep with his head in Tony’s lap. Steve could have sworn that Tony’s hands did more than any painkiller for his headache. His fingers moved slowly through Steve’s hair, and it felt like he was drawing out the pain, siphoning it away. Or maybe it was just the closeness, the knowledge that Tony was there, and so was Bucky, that after so many months of stress and misery, there was a light at the end of the tunnel. Steve had been holding himself rigid for so long, trying to be strong for his lovers while his life fell apart around him, and now he didn’t need to anymore. 

He might have leaked a few more tears into the fabric of Tony’s pajamas. Tony didn’t say anything about it. 

He sat up when Bucky came back and accepted his mug of tea. Tony had one, too, but Bucky’s own hands were conspicuously empty. “I know Tony and I are under strict orders to hydrate, but you need to, too,” Steve pointed out. 

Bucky nodded. “I will. But I think––I think I should sleep in Clint’s apartment. Tonight, and for a while yet. I don’t think we should rush this. It’s too important.”

Steve wanted to argue; he wanted Bucky back in their bed as soon as possible. But one glance at Tony made him realize that Bucky was probably doing the right thing. They all needed time to wrap their heads around this. Better to slow down now than have to backtrack later. 

“All right. But I think Steve should stay there with you,” Tony said. “Sometimes, anyway.”

Bucky’s eyes widened. “Really?”

Tony nodded. “Really.” He took a deep breath. “I was so afraid that Steve would leave me. The only way I had to convince myself that he wouldn’t was to make sure he came back to me at the end of the day, no matter what. But I know that was really hard on both of you, and I think I can get by without it, so... yeah.”

“Thank you.” Bucky’s voice was small. “Really, Tony.”

Tony just nodded. After a moment, Bucky said, “Do either of you need anything? Bruce will be on my ass if I don’t go talk to Sam, and it’s already getting late.”

Steve glanced at Tony, who shook his head. “I think we’re okay,” Steve said. 

Bucky left, with a single backwards glance. Steve finished his tea and then lay down again with his head in Tony’s lap. For a long time, neither of them said a word. Steve was trying to think through what he wanted to say, but it was tough when his head was aching so badly. And he wasn’t sure how Tony was going to react to it, either. Tony was into grand gestures and incredible acts of service, but being told he was loved in plain English made him squirm. Bucky was much better at getting him to hear it. 

But sometimes Steve had to say it. And so finally he sat up and looked Tony in the eye. 

“I’m really proud of you,” he said. 

Tony rolled his eyes, because of course he did. “Steve...”

“Nope,” Steve said. “I’m injured. So you have to listen to me.”

Tony raised an eyebrow at him. “Is that how it is?”

“Yes,” Steve said firmly. “I don’t––I can’t pretend to know how hard this was on you. And I know that you were really, really afraid. But I’m so proud of you for taking this leap. I hope you’re not doing it just for me and Bucky.”

Tony’s face was flushed red all the way down his neck. “I’m not,” he said. “I––I really missed _us_. And I missed Bucky. And I really don’t want to Ross to win,” he added, scowling. “God, Steve, you should have seen the look on his face when I walked in with Bucky. You could’ve knocked him over with a feather.”

Steve had to smile at the image. “That isn’t a great reason for getting back together.”

Tony shrugged. “I’m being honest. And it’s not the main reason, it’s just a––a catalyst.” He looked at Steve, his face uncharacteristically serious. “I know this really hurt you, and I’m sorry about that. I’m not apologizing,” he added, before Steve could object, “I don’t know if I could’ve done anything differently, but... for not seeing what it was doing to you, I’m sorry.”

Steve ducked his head. “Thanks.”

Tony made a face. “Are we done with this touching moment? Can we be done? I’m already kind of nauseous.”

“Yes, we can be done,” Steve said. He yawned. “I think I need to sleep.”

“Me, too,” Tony said tiredly. 

Steve lay down. Tony rolled onto his side, resting his head against Steve’s shoulder, carefully avoiding putting any pressure on his still-healing ribs. “Lights, J.”

The lights dimmed. The two of them lay in the dark without speaking, just as they had nearly every night since the video. But this felt different. This time, there wasn’t a wasteland of things unsaid and unshared between them. He reached down and took Steve’s hand in his, lacing their fingers together. He squeezed Steve’s hand. Steve squeezed back. 

For the first time in months, Tony felt safe as he fell asleep. 

***

The sixteenth of December was also the first snowfall of the year in New York. Bucky spent the afternoon baking, while Tony and Steve were out. He did a batch of pumpkin bread and a batch of cranberry muffins, and in between pulling things out of the oven, he stirred the soup on the stove––minestrone, this time. Tony had pulled out an old, dog-eared recipe book the day before and handed it to Bucky. They’d be having Maria Stark’s minestrone and carbonara for dinner, as soon as Steve and Tony got back from the cemetery. 

“Sergeant Barnes, Sergeant Wilson would like to know if this is a good time,” JARVIS said. 

“Sure, J, send him up,” Bucky said, chopping apples for a crumble. He left off briefly to start a fresh pot of coffee so that Sam could have some with his pumpkin bread. 

“Wow, it smells amazing in here,” Sam said as he stepped off the elevator. “As coping mechanisms go, I think I’m in favor of stress baking.” He paused to greet Chewy, who was sprawled out on the floor, blocking the entryway to the kitchen. Bucky wasn’t sure if Chewy was keeping a close eye on him or just trolling for dropped bits of food. Probably both. 

“Beats staring at the wall,” Bucky agreed. He slid a plate with a slice of pumpkin bread on it across the kitchen island. The coffee maker beeped, and Bucky poured Sam a cup. “So, did Steve ask you to come check on me?”

“No, I’m here of my own volition,” Sam said, doctoring his coffee. “Thought you might be having a tough afternoon, all things considered.”

“I think Tony’s having tougher.”. 

“Which doesn’t mean you’re not allowed to feel things,” Sam countered. “So.” He stuck a piece of pumpkin bread in his mouth. “What are you feeling?”

Bucky didn’t answer until he’d finished measuring out the dry ingredients for the crumble. He wasn’t sure what he was feeling, if he was honest, except that it had driven him into the kitchen. “Anxious,” he finally settled on. “Worried. Sad, for Tony.”

Sam nodded. “You worried about anything in particular?”

Bucky shrugged. He started mixing the ingredients together. “I don’t know. I guess I still think there’s a possibility that Tony’s going to decide this is just too hard.”

“Hmm,” Sam said. “That why you’re still sleeping downstairs?”

Bucky frowned. In order for Sam to know that, Steve must have mentioned it. Which meant it must have been bothering Steve, even if he hadn’t said anything to Bucky about it. Bucky tried to scrape together some indignation at the idea of Steve talking to Sam about him, but he couldn’t manage it; he knew he’d been worrying Steve almost physically sick for months now. 

He did wonder just how much Steve had told Sam––whether he knew that not only hadn’t Bucky slept up here yet, the three of them also hadn’t had sex yet. Steve considered sex to be strictly private, so he wouldn’t have wanted to tell Sam anything––but he might have anyway, if he was worried enough about what it meant.

“It’s only been a month,” Bucky finally said. 

“I know,” Sam said, “and I’m not trying to rush you. There’s no timetable that has to be adhered to. But Steve said he and Tony were ready, and you were still hesitating.”

“I just don’t want us to move too fast,” Bucky said. “I’m afraid that if we do, we’ll fuck it up.”

“You realize that doing this at a glacial pace doesn’t guarantee success,” Sam said. “Nothing does, actually. But I think the three of you all very much want it to work, and that’s half the battle right there.”

“Only half, though.” Bucky poured his apples into a pie pan and started covering them with the crumble topping. He was glad it gave him somewhere to look, other than at Sam. 

Sam didn’t say anything for a while. Bucky put the crumble in the oven, and then realized that that left him with no excuse for refusing to look at him. So he did, reluctantly, and found Sam studying him, hands wrapped around his coffee mug, a slight frown creasing his forehead. 

“What?” Bucky asked, testily. 

Sam shrugged. “I was just wondering. Have you been waiting for today, specifically?”

Bucky blinked. “Not... consciously.” Though now that Sam had said it, it sort of made sense in Bucky’s head. He’d known the anniversary was approaching; they’d all known it, even though they’d avoided talking about it until a week ago, when Tony had abruptly announced that he wanted to go to the mausoleum for the first time in probably ten years. He’d wanted Steve to go with him. Bucky had not been invited, which was fine––he wasn’t sure he could have handled it––but he had to admit that it’d made him anxious, wondering if Tony was going to come home and tell him he had to leave. 

He’d felt better after Tony had given him the recipe book yesterday. That had felt a little like forgiveness. And a lot like giving him a job so he wouldn’t go crazy. 

“But unconsciously?” Sam pressed. 

Bucky shrugged. He grabbed a sponge off the counter and started cleaning. “It seemed like an important date.”

“Anniversaries can be hard,” Sam said. “I’d try not to make too many assumptions based on anything Tony says today, even if it stings. But you might think about letting yourself get a little more attached. Maybe try sleeping up here, if that’s something you want.”

Bucky paused in his cleaning and took a deep breath. “I do want it.” 

“Then let yourself have it.” Sam stared at him until Bucky nodded. 

“Thanks, Sam,” Bucky said. 

Sam shrugged. “I do what I can, considering what stubborn assholes you all are.” He swiped a cranberry muffin off a tray and held it up. “I’ll take payment in baked goods.”

Bucky had to smile. “I think we can come to an arrangement.”

“Sergeant Barnes, Sergeant Wilson, pardon the interruption,” JARVIS said, “but Mr. Stark and Captain Rogers have just pulled into the garage.”

“That’s my cue,” Sam said. “Remember what I said, all right?”

Bucky nodded. “I will.” 

Sam left with a wave. Bucky went back to wiping down the counters so that he could start cooking dinner. Steve and Tony were back earlier than Bucky had expected, so the carbonara wasn’t ready. At least there was plenty to snack on if they were hungry.

Bucky turned around when he heard the elevator doors open. Tony went straight into the bedroom without saying a word. Steve stepped over Chewy and immediately snagged a cranberry muffin off the counter. “He’s fine,” he said when Bucky looked at him worriedly. “I think he just needs a few minutes. Wow, this is delicious.”

“Save some for Tony, you bottomless pit,” Bucky said. “How was it?”

Steve sighed heavily. “Hard. I don’t know that it did what he was hoping it would. We didn’t stay very long. How are you doing?”

“I’m okay,” Bucky said. “I kept busy.”

“So I see,” Steve said. He came around the kitchen island and put his arms around Bucky. Bucky leaned against him, and he felt Steve press his lips to his temple. 

The bedroom door opened. Bucky turned his head to watch as Tony came out dressed in pajama pants and a threadbare t-shirt. His steps faltered when he saw the two of them, and Bucky saw him visibly take a deep breath. “Any chance I could get in on this?” Tony asked. 

“Always,” Steve said, opening an arm. 

Bucky prepared mentally to step away after the first few seconds and let Steve hold Tony. He wasn’t prepared for Tony to turn and press his face into the side of Bucky’s neck, practically burrowing in. Steve kissed the top of Tony’s head, making him grumble briefly, and stepped away with an _all yours_ gesture in Bucky’s direction. Bucky closed his arms around Tony’s back and firmly quashed the part of himself that wanted to panic. 

“Come on, Chewy,” Bucky heard Steve call quietly, “time to go out. And then you get to go see Clint.” The elevator doors opened and shut, and the two of them were alone. 

Bucky took a deep breath, held it for three seconds, and let it go. “How was it?” he asked. 

Tony made an unhappy noise. “Cold. Hard. Literally; it’s marble from top to bottom and they don’t heat mausoleums for obvious reasons so it was freezing. I hate that place. Howard deserves it, but I wish Mom wasn’t there.” Tony turned his head slightly so his voice wasn’t so muffled. “I told Steve I don’t want to be buried there. Assuming I don’t die in a way that means you can’t bury me. Just cremate me. Keep me on the mantle.”

“You’re not going to die,” Bucky said, feeling a totally different kind of panic well up in him at the thought. 

“I might. Any of us might. And I don’t want to end up there, so I’m telling both of you.”

“Okay,” Bucky agreed. 

Tony was quiet for a long time. Bucky held him and waited. “I don’t know why I wanted to go this year,” he finally said. “I thought it might help, but it didn’t. They’re still dead. I just stood there, staring at the names, and realized I’d rather come home and eat the food she loved with you and Steve than be there one second longer.”

“You think...” Bucky swallowed. “You think she’d be okay with that?”

Tony sighed. “I think she would have understood that loving you doesn’t mean I don’t love her. And the more I think about her life, the more I think she knew a lot about what it was like not to have any good choices. Not that your situations were equivalent, but... I think she’d have understood. Better than I do, even.” 

Tony fell silent. Bucky didn’t know what to say, so he decided it was better to stay quiet and just be with Tony. 

They stood there for a long time, holding each other. But eventually Bucky had to say, “If you want to eat dinner at some point tonight, you’re going to need to let go of me.”

Tony chuckled ruefully. “Sorry.” He pulled away but not very far; just a few inches. He tilted his head back in an obvious invitation, and Bucky took him up on it, kissing him. Tony inhaled sharply through his nose and went up on his toes, one hand bracing the back of Bucky’s neck as he deepened the kiss. Bucky was surprised, but he went along with it, letting Tony take what he wanted. 

“Mmm,” Tony said, when he broke the kiss. His eyes were still closed. 

“Dinner,” Bucky reminded him. “Carbonara.”

Tony opened his eyes and smiled at Bucky, almost sweetly. “Right.”

Bucky started chopping bacon for the carbonara, while Tony sat at the counter with a cup of coffee, a cranberry muffin, and his phone. Bucky had just started the bacon frying when Steve returned from dropping Chewy off with Clint. Bucky glanced up to see a hopelessly sappy look turned their way as Steve took in the domestic scene in the kitchen. Bucky made a face at him, but Steve looked unrepentant. 

“Just got an email from my contact at the UN,” Tony reported, as Steve pulled up a stool at the kitchen island. “Apparently our liaison will be Crown Prince T’Challa of Wakanda.”

Steve frowned. “Have you met him?”

“I’ve barely heard of him,” Tony said. “Wakanda is famous for being camera shy and isolationist, I’m surprised T’Challa wanted the job. We’ll need to meet him at some point, obviously. I’m not going to agree to put someone I don’t know in charge of this.”

“He has to be better than Ross,” Steve pointed out. 

“A low bar,” Tony said with a frown. 

“Anyway, that’s enough work for the evening,” Steve said, taking Tony’s phone from him. “It’ll be there in the morning.”

“Fine,” Tony said, a little sulkily. But it was mostly for show, as far as Bucky could tell, since he leaned in when Steve put his arm around him to pull him close. 

Bucky was nervous about the carbonara, which was clearly a childhood favorite of Tony’s. The minestrone went over well, but that hadn’t been the thing Tony had requested when he’d given Bucky his mother’s recipe book. He waited anxiously until Tony had taken his first bite, chewed, and swallowed. “Perfect,” he said, looking up to meet Bucky’s eyes. “Just like I remember.”

Bucky relaxed. “Good. I’m glad.”

Bucky had made a ton of pasta, knowing that Steve would be hungry, but he hadn’t expected Tony to put away as much as he did. Tony hadn’t had much of an appetite the last week or so, but he ate a bowl of soup and two large bowls of pasta, and then looked like he was on the verge of falling asleep at the kitchen island. Steve offered to do the dishes and shooed them both into the living room. 

Bucky waffled over where to sit, but Tony apparently had his own ideas. He shoved Bucky down on the chaise portion of the sofa, pushed at his knees until he opened them, and lay down with his back to Bucky’s chest. Bucky froze for a few seconds, startled, but then he closed his arms around Tony, holding him tight. Tony sighed and went limp, all of the tension bleeding out of him at once. 

Bucky found himself overwhelmed. It was such a demonstration of trust from Tony, and he didn’t know what to do with it. He would have known what to do with distance. He would have known what to do if he’d had to earn his way back into Tony’s good graces. He was prepared to respect Tony’s boundaries and never overstep and take it as slow as Tony wanted. He had no idea what to do when forgiveness was freely given.

“I can feel you thinking too hard,” Tony murmured. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” Bucky said, even as his voice cracked. “I’m just... I’m just really glad you liked the carbonara.”

“I did,” Tony said. “Though I think it might be a once a year thing. I can feel my arteries clogging even as we speak.” Bucky laughed, shakily. “But seriously, what’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” Bucky insisted. 

“I don’t believe you.” Tony sat up and looked at him. 

Bucky couldn’t bring himself to meet Tony’s eyes as he admitted, “I just don’t trust that this isn’t going to go away.”

Tony’s mouth opened, then closed. “Ah.” 

Bucky knew how that sounded. The last thing he wanted was for Tony to feel like it was his fault, or that Bucky didn’t trust _him_. He couldn’t have explained it, but in his head, there was a distinction between not trusting the situation and not trusting Tony himself. “I’m working on it. And... time will help, I guess. Not sure there’s much else that will.” 

Tony nodded. He looked down at his hands. “I don’t know if this will help or hurt, but I was going to ask you... and you don’t have to, I don’t want you to feel like you’re obligated, but––I was wondering if you’d stay up here with me and Steve tonight.”

Bucky blinked. “Really?”

“I kind of... want to be in the middle?” Tony said with a shaky smile. “It sounds nice anyway. But I understand if you’re not ready for it.”

“I thought you weren’t ready for it,” Bucky said, though in truth that had only been half of his trepidation. “If you’re ready, then I’m ready.”

Tony looked at him sharply, like he knew exactly how much of a half-truth that was. But he didn’t call him out on it. He lay down again with his head on Bucky’s chest, and Bucky wrapped him up. “I’m ready,” Tony murmured. 

Steve found them like that once he’d finished with the dishes. He claimed his spot on the sofa next to Bucky, and Bucky leaned against him. Steve rested a hand on the back of Tony’s neck, completing the circle. None of them spoke. It felt like there was nothing left to say. And even though part of Bucky was still convinced this could vanish at any time––a fear that he couldn’t regard as completely paranoid, given what had happened before––the possibility felt pretty remote at that moment.

It felt even more remote when Tony shifted around and kissed him. Bucky couldn’t help the startled noise that escaped him at first, but Tony persisted. Bucky could feel Steve at his side, could hear his heartbeat and the way it started speeding up as he watched Tony kissing Bucky, and he could feel Tony in his arms, pressed up against him. Bucky stroked a hand down Tony’s back and rested it at the very top of his ass; Tony groaned and shifted, and Bucky felt him harden against his hip. Behind him, Steve ducked his head and kissed the place where Bucky’s neck met his shoulder. Bucky shivered. 

“I thought you wanted to be in the middle tonight,” Bucky said, pulling away and forcing his eyes open. 

“Eventually,” Tony said. “But if I recall correctly, I owe you one.”

“You owe me one?” Bucky repeated, frowning. 

“Yeah. Um.” Tony cleared his throat. “I don’t know if you remember, but... that morning. You took a raincheck.”

“Oh,” Bucky said. He did remember, vividly. He’d avoided thinking about that morning over the past few months; it was too painful to remember the last time he and Tony had slept together. “You don’t have to––”

“I want to,” Tony said firmly. He looked over Bucky’s shoulder at Steve. “We want to,” he amended. “If you do.”

“I do,” Bucky said, grip tightening involuntarily on Tony’s hips. He took a deep breath and forced himself to loosen up. “You got a plan?”

Tony smirked. “Always. What about you, Steve? You’re pretty quiet back there.”

“I’m up for anything,” Steve said, sounding suspiciously hoarse. “Anything the two of you want.”

“Well, that’s a dangerously blank check if I ever heard one,” Tony said, smiling. “Come on, then.” He stood up and offered Bucky a hand up. Bucky, in turn, offered Steve a hand. 

In the bedroom, Tony dug the bottle of lube out from the bedside table and tossed it to Steve. Bucky went into the bathroom––ostensibly to pee but really to give himself a bit of a breather. He left the door cracked open and he could hear Steve and Tony getting started: a low laugh that cut off with a moan, the slight creak of the bedsprings, the cap on the bottle of lube being flicked open. 

He looked at himself in the mirror. It had been longer than he cared to know since he had last done that. He hadn’t wanted to look himself in the eye, hadn’t wanted to see the strain etched into his face. He was thinner now, his cheekbones more sharply defined. He was paler, too, from having left the tower so infrequently, and had bags under his eyes from not sleeping enough. But Tony and Steve still wanted him. He had to trust it. 

“Buck?” he heard Steve call. “Everything okay?”

“Yeah, just a second.” Bucky splashed some water on his face and patted it dry with a towel, then turned resolutely away from the mirror. 

Tony and Steve were pretty close to naked already, just their boxer-briefs left. Tony was straddling Steve’s hips, and Bucky could see their dicks clearly outlined through their underwear. 

Bucky could feel Tony eyeing him as he came out of the bathroom and started stripping down. “Bucky, are you sure you’re ready for this?” Tony asked. “We can just watch a movie and go to sleep.”

Bucky shook his head. “I don’t think waiting longer is going to help. In fact, I think it might be the opposite. I want this, I’m just...”

“Scared,” Steve supplied quietly. “I know the feeling.” He stretched his hand out, and Bucky took it, climbing onto the bed beside them. 

Steve kissed him, and Bucky tried to relax into it. Tony was there, petting him gently, thumb moving over one of the Bucky’s nipples. Under their combined attention, Bucky finally started to unwind. This was good, Bucky’s body remembered, even if his mind didn’t, quite. This was right. This had felt like home before everything had fallen apart, and it would feel like home again. 

He relaxed enough to let Tony manhandle him down onto the mattress, onto his side. Steve stretched out behind him, bottle of lube in hand, and touched Bucky’s knee until he bent it, planting one foot flat on the bed. Tony stretched out in front of him and reached down with one slicked-up hand to take hold of Bucky’s half-hard dick. He kept his grip gentle and his eyes on Bucky’s. Steve was mouthing kisses up the back of his neck, one hand rubbing slow circles over his entrance. 

“You sure you don’t want––” Bucky gasped as Steve slid a finger inside––“to be in the middle? This feels backwards.”

“Next time,” Tony said, and did a thing with his thumb over the head of Bucky’s dick that completely eliminated his ability to argue about it. If what Tony wanted tonight was to take care of Bucky, then Bucky could do that. It wasn’t exactly a hardship.

Steve was always careful in how he prepped him, but he was especially thorough tonight. Bucky suspected he was taking his cue from Tony, who seemed to want to draw it out. By the time Steve pressed inside, Bucky was aching for it. Tony braced him from the front, letting Bucky bury his face in his shoulder, and he heard and felt Tony and Steve exchange a kiss over him. The three of the were locked together, as close as three people could get. 

Steve didn’t thrust so much as rock into him, slow and steady. Eyes closed, Bucky heard the cap of the lube being flicked open again, and then Tony took Bucky’s dick in hand again––right alongside Tony’s own. Every time Steve rocked into him, it pushed him forward into Tony’s grip, up against Tony’s dick, and made the edges of Bucky’s vision go fuzzy with pleasure. 

Bucky put his metal hand on top of Tony’s hand, slotting their fingers together. He was dizzy with sensation and right on the edge, and he wasn’t sure how much more he could take. He suspected that Steve could go forever with the pace he’d set, but Tony was the one actually calling the shots. Bucky tightened his hand around Tony’s, careful not to lose control and grip too hard; Tony moaned and bucked his hips, the first real loss of control Bucky had seen from him. Their dicks slid together, hot and wet, and Steve’s hips stuttered. 

Bucky craned his neck around, so he could look at Steve. “Come on,” he said. “Stop fucking around already.”

“Impatient,” Steve muttered, but he sounded breathless.

“Damn right,” Bucky said, and clamped down on Steve’s dick. Steve groaned; his next move was more thrust than roll, and Bucky smirked in satisfaction. 

“I love it when you top from the bottom,” Tony said. Bucky decided to shut him up by slipping one slick hand back behind his balls. Tony’s eyelashes fluttered, and his mouth dropped open in a silent gasp. 

Tony came first, clutching at Bucky, fingernails digging into the skin of his back. It hurt, but all the wires in Bucky’s brain were crossed and it felt like pleasure-pain, just sparks going off. Tony’s grip on Bucky’s dick tightened, rather than slackened, and Bucky let it tip him over the edge. Orgasm slammed into him, and his brain whited out, all circuits offline. 

He came back just in time for Steve to thrust himself home and come, muffling his groans in Bucky’s shoulder blade. 

For a long time, no one spoke. Bucky held onto Tony, and Steve reached across him to do the same. Their legs tangled together, until Bucky almost couldn’t have said whose belonged to whom. He was sticky with come and lube, too warm and utterly content to be just where he was. He might have leaked a few tears into Tony’s hair, thinking about how close he’d come to losing this. He suspected he wasn’t the only one. 

Finally, he had to get up. Steve grumbled but let him out of the bed. Bucky rinsed off in the shower and came back to find Steve changing the sheets.

“Tony’s making hot chocolate,” Steve said, when Bucky frowned. “I think he wanted a moment.” Steve sat down on the freshly made bed, still naked and glistening with sweat. God, but he was pretty. “How are you? Are you doing okay?”

Bucky nodded. “Yeah. That was...really nice.”

Steve smiled. “It was. C’mere.” He pulled Bucky down on the bed beside him, holding him close and kissing him. “I love you.”

“Sap,” Bucky muttered. 

“It’s true.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Bucky flicked Steve’s ear. “I love you, too.”

Tony returned with three hot chocolates and a plate of apple crumble for them all to share. For once, Steve didn’t complain about eating in bed. Tony crawled into the middle, and the three of them dug into the same plate with three different forks. It was delicious, if Bucky could say so himself, and judging by the noises the others were making, they agreed. 

“We should go apple picking next year,” Steve said through a mouthful of crumble. 

“I think I have an orchard upstate,” Tony said thoughtfully. “I used to, anyway. I should see what’s happened with it. But, um.” Tony swallowed and didn’t take another bite. Bucky stopped loading his fork up with his next bite and looked at him. “I actually was wondering....”

“What?” Bucky asked, when Tony didn’t continue. 

“At some point we’re going to need to all go to Geneva, probably, to sign whatever we decide on with the UN committee. And Geneva is pretty close to Italy.” 

Steve made a noise of understanding. “The place on the coast you were telling me about. Where your mom used to take you.”

Tony nodded, looking down at his hands. “It’s a villa on the Amalfi coast,” he said––mostly to him, Bucky guessed, since Steve seemed to know what he was talking about already. “It’s... possibly my favorite place in the world, though to be honest it’s been so long since I’ve been back that I might be misremembering everything. But I thought we could go afterward, all three of us.”

“That sounds great,” Steve said, and pressed a kiss to the side of Tony’s head. “Really. I’m in. Bucky?”

Bucky didn’t answer for a long moment. He wasn’t sure he wanted to go to a place where Maria Stark had taken her son. He wasn’t sure he had the _right_ to such a place. But then again, who could decide that, other than Tony? And if Tony wanted him there, if that was how Tony wanted to honor his mother’s memory, then who was Bucky to refuse? 

Tony had forgiven him. Tony seemed to think that his mother would have forgiven him, if she could have. Punishing himself under those circumstances by refusing to go seemed... not selfish, exactly. But possibly self-indulgent. 

It might be a hard trip. It might also be a beautiful one. Bucky thought it would almost certainly be worth it, to be there with Tony and Steve. 

“Yeah,” Bucky said. “I’d love that. Let’s go.”

_Fin._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And now, if anyone needs me, I'll be over here writing like 25k of Irondad fluff to recover from this monster. 
> 
> Like all writers, I love comments.

**Author's Note:**

> I have been forced by a small number of assholes to turn on comment moderation for this story. You are not required to like something; I am not required to take verbal abuse or tolerate being called a "garbage person." Rude comments will henceforth be deleted without being given the time of day. 
> 
> The ability to take multiple perspectives is the hallmark of being a goddamn adult and a moral human being. I love Tony Stark, but he is not your woobie. Thanks for coming to my TED talk.
> 
> (I still love comments, because I'm a writer and all writers love comments.)


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